


One Million Years

by Abraxas (Qlippoth)



Category: Thundercats (1985)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 27
Words: 42,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22356451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qlippoth/pseuds/Abraxas
Summary: Set in a distant, dystopic future, where 3rd Earth is a planet-wide city, and its people are stratified by ethnicity. Despite the advanced technical civilization built by the combined forces of Thunderians & Amazonians, does MummRa still exist? Is he still plotting revenge?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Like all of my Thundercat fanfics, I wrote this almost 20 years ago, way before the 2011 reboot. Nevertheless, I suspect this story works in either G1 or G2 universes simply because such a vast amount of time passed that the origins of the Thunderians and MummRa evolved into mythos.
> 
> If you're a recent G2 fan, and don't know what a throwback Thunderian is, it's a fanon-term from c. 2000 that we came up with to describe the appearance of Thunderians who were more feline than humanoid. The G1 version of Grune is the classic example.
> 
> As always, my versions of names are variants, honest to goodness G1 fandom, given the time frame whence it existed, didn't have the kind of resources available today, so the names we used varied by our actual experience with the merchandise and/or how well we recalled certain episodes. This may come as shock, LOL, but children's cartoons in the 1980s were not known for consistency.
> 
> FYI - the DNA of the film, Metropolis (from 1927), is all over this story; watching that film actually inspired me to write this!

Originally Published at the Treasures of Thundera Yahoo Group, August 19, 2001.

* * *

The piercing howl of steam whistles sounded the ending of one shift and the beginning of another. Although their jarring alarms ceased in a matter of seconds, the hot vapors they emitted lingered in that damp, sooty underworld as swirls of hot gasses, streaming across high ceilings and skeletal supports - the ancient ironworks upon which the heavenly city of Metropolis had been built. The foul air was at best arid, resonating the slightest ticking of the infernal machines. At worst it was smog so thick, so brackish that only the strongest could survive - for long. Often - and that 'day' was no exception - the pollutants would form violent clouds along the vaulted tops of the main chambers and rain a dark, rancid filth of sweat, ash and fungal grime.

Motion. Everything everywhere was in motion. Slow or steady. Even the noxious air was kept in constant circulation by the fans that cooled the rapid, timeworn wheels, gears and cogs. The machines ran nonstop, except for those few days out of the year when their parts were checked, oiled or replaced. The workers, too, the throwbacks rejected by the elite of the city above, were slaves to an eternal flux, as untold thousands labored in ten-hour shifts, day after day after day.

The imperfect Thunderians toiled to their deaths in deep, dark shafts that few in Metropolis knew or even dreamed of. And when they were not wasting away their lives in perpetual, societal bondage, they would 'relax' up on the surface of Third Earth, a land once covered by lakes and forests, wide, living rivers and snowcapped mountains, a planet once beautified by untamed oceans and bright, blue skies but that a never-ending line of industrial machination had reduced to a wasteland replete with foundations of bulk steel and titanium frames, jetting pipes, turning blades, teeming cesspools and gapping holes dug straight through the planet's core. And darkness, perpetual darkness but for those few spots here and there where the city had not yet reached.

That abhorrent hell of moonless, starless night teemed with the humming of machines vibrating. Power generators, steam turbines and pistons - it was an awesome feat of engineering, a spinning, whirling fervor that went nowhere. Progress had transformed the planet into an artificial entity and all the processes that Nature had once taken care of now had to be synthesized. Machines that cleaned air, machines that purified water, machines that decomposed wastes into more useful compounds. All of that and more required unyielding attention. No, the metallic heart of the city could not be allowed to stop, not for a moment.

Up from the hives of the bowels of the earth came the exhausted workers of the past shift. Time had long ago drained their emotions and so without expression they gathered onto the rolling sidewalks from all directions in absolute chaos. From lions to cheetahs, sabertooths, the masses came together in a mindless unity born of necessity. Their uniforms, like their exposed fur, were dirtied black with soot and clung onto their bodies like a permanent, second skin. Their masters issued them only one pair of garments their whole adult lives and if or when those linens disintegrated, outside of the charity of others, they were gone forever - many of the men were naked but because of the darkness and the filth few ever, really noticed or cared.

Inch by inch the walkways merged and the lowly cats were brought into freight elevators that lifted them up to the surface levels while others were dropped down to replenish the hives with refreshed blood. Up and down, down and up, the air echoed the trampling of heavy feet that evolved in step to an eerie and silent funeral march.

At the 'upper' levels foremen herded their sluggish, weakened counterparts into cubicles. Within the males bred with the resident females, the overseers timing and monitoring to make sure that the act was done quickly. That there was no frivolity, no stalling. Boys were instructed on the working and maintaining of the machines that they would one day soon service for the rest of their lives. Girls, at even earlier ages, were put aside into nurseries and cubicles where they would bide their time in sporadic isolation, conceiving or birthing young in an endless chain that stretched out to their own gruesome, putrid ends.

What little free time the workmen had was spent loitering about immense, gothic-like rooms, fraternizing in pools. There they ate, drank or slunked into stacked, horizontal shelves one, two or three at a time for a different sort of relaxation. Yet, even there, they were kept in motion, never allowed to stay at the same area for longer than an hour.

Such was the world that the Thundercats had created, but how could it be that the descendants of Liono and his allies, the Warrior humans, would find themselves in such a precarious situation, such an uneasy balance? After one million years of bliss few knew, less cared and for the most part the people were content. Little had changed and so it seemed, after ages of complacency, that little needed to be changed. The first, few steps into that brave, new world were tiny, unnoticeable. Many of the ideas were already there, so artfully, cleverly disguised. The snobbery of the Thunderian nobles, the prejudices of the humans, only the slightest push was required for those ancient, ignorant tendencies to spiral out of control. It was, in effect, only a matter of time.


	2. Chapter 2

Out in open, green pleasure gardens, half a mile into milk-white skies, an air-screen, perched above the swaying tops of bushy trees, looked down upon youngsters huddled about sparkling fountains on grassy sheets - the children of the masters of Metropolis lay back, bodies intertwined, filling the air with the soft sounds of moaning. All the while the angled monitor displayed the latest news flash:

_A thin, frail-looking human with short, black hair and tiny, black eyes peered into the camera as he spoke: "These three, throwbacks," he said, face visibly disgusted, "were found in possession of plans," he raised a hand - in his grip were flapping scraps of linens, "plans to subvert authority and to instill among us a new order founded on the seditious notions of their fellow cohorts. You may examine the evidence."_

_The camera moved back from the close-up to take in a panoramic view of the glass-and-iron courtroom._

_The man handed the 'documents' to a panel of six humans and six purebred Thunderians. Standing in the background were the alleged conspirators, naked but for loose loincloths, faces above the shot on the screen to spare the sensitivities of the ultra-elite, to whom the judicial proceedings were being aired. Armed Thundercat guards surrounded the accused._

At the far end of the garden, away from the carnal worshipers, where the soil gave way to concrete, a thin door slid open and a lone figure entered the scene. He was a lion, mane dark red, long and flowing, fur a dense shade of tan-yellow. Silently and without fanfare he approached a fountain. Looking from side to side he saw before him the nude, convoluted bodies of humans and Thunderians on display - his schoolmates slumbered morbidly exhausted.

" _What is the verdict, forewoman?"_

The young lion peered up at the air-screen - the image was sharp and so clear that the substance of the wall behind it was not visible.

" _Guilty," a woman said and in no particular order came the rest of the votes:_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

" _Guilty."_

_The man sighed and stepped back from the jury, dismissing them with the wave of a hand. "So be it," he said at last as the twelve-member pool cleared the area. He turned to face the three condemned, imperfect Thunderians, whose heads a trick of the camera had chopped off, their massive musculature - a quality of physique unknown to most of the inhabitants of the city - was darkened with ash, glimmering with sweat, standing in direct defiance to their minuscule judge and - "then by the powers granted to me by Phaeton, Lord of the Thundercats and Livia, Queen of the Amazons, I hereby sentence you to death."_

_The cloudy images of the trial, blurry but distinct, were 'broadcasted' onto a circular pool through methods long ago made obsolete by mere technology. Glowing red eyes looked on in an odd mixture of happiness and despair - as they had for centuries seemingly without end. The pictures faded into steam and, as the vast chamber plummeted into lengthening shades of darkness, a vile cackle shook the stony vault to its foundations._

_The cloudy heights of the city were spanned by many tall buildings and enormous edifices. Railroads at every thousand feet and imposing highways transported the prosperous inhabitants of Metropolis to and from their professional jobs. Stratified from top to bottom were the different classes of Thunderians and humans and their cross breeds. The common folk. The nobles lived at the top and at the very top, in the tallest tower of them all, in a windowless room known only to a few, paced the most frightened man on Third Earth. In the shadows, while a monitor in the distance played un-watched, he laid a hand on the Sword of Omens - but its eye remained closed, providing no comfort._

The young lion sprayed his face with the clear water of a fountain. He caught only a passing, instant glimpse of himself before the turbulence of the rippling surface destroyed the unity of his reflection. Shadows lined his face around his nose and mouth. There were very few mirrors around - his father hated mirrors - and he seldom ever got a chance to look at himself. He wondered why he did not quite appear like his companions - not the humans. His doctors had told him not to worry about it, that it was just a phase of self-consciousness that all adolescents went through. Yet he could not help but feel that there was more to it, that he was -

"Kara," a soft voice called his name and he turned to the side.

Just under the sight of the air-screen - that had at that very moment shown the smoky residue that was left of the executed subverters - was a girl in her late teens, just a year older than him. She held a deep-red, purplish flower in fingers that she twiddled seductively.

"Mesilina," he answered her. "I haven't seen you here in a while."

He gave her a friendly though timid smile as she came closer to him.

"I know, I know, I've been away for too long. My mother insists that I learn the old ways," she snickered, eyes rolling. "As if we lived in trees or something."

The two shared a slight, passing laugh.

She leaned forward. He grew tense, nervous that she might kiss him. Instead she wove the flower stem into his mane, over his right ear.

"Oh, you look so cute," another female said - a lioness and regular to the garden.

"Agripina," Kara called her by name.

She hugged him - he merely draped his arms over her back and no more. Her hands roamed about his fur, her well-defined claws met his flesh - he shivered in shock at the intimacy of that unexpected contact. She giggled as if amused.

Sprawled on the grass, the other purebred Thunderians groaned quietly and looked away. The males especially had no real love or admiration for the lion - reality, however, kept their tongues quiet, their contempt in check. It was not any single thing in particular - no, it was just something odd about their would be -

"Hey!" one of the human boys shouted as he ran toward the lion, whose open, white robes fretted in the breeze. He tapped the feline's wrist: "You're it!"

"I'm going to get you!" he roared as he ran after the naked teenager, letting his own garments fall to the grass.

Mesilina looked at the lioness. Agripina's eyes had a certain glister. It was as if she knew something that the Warrior Maiden did not.


	3. Chapter 3

Kara growled playfully - it was just something that came to him naturally and meant no harm. He did not want to scare the boy. No, he did not want to scare him, he was a good friend.

"Hahaha!" Marcelus laughed as he stormed through a field of knee-high grass. He stopped under the hanging vines of a weeping willow - its leaves scantily covering the exposed flesh of his body. The lion was steaming toward him, his face flashing a bright grin. He let the Thunderian come close and nimbly strafed off to the side from the tree, over its roots, to one of the main fountains.

The lion again caught up with his prey and found himself in an uneasy balance. The human and he stood at opposite sides of the round, concrete structure. Leaning over the rim, sipping the clear waters, they wasted precious moments keeping a constant distance away from each other.

An idea came to the cub just then: "I guess the fountain's safe," he said, displeased.

"The fountain's always safe," Marcelus responded as he held onto the edge - Kara stepped closer to him. His impulse was to turn and run, but when he saw his friend in full, he felt, oddly, a certain chill, a coldness that needed the warmth of the feline to tame. Lost in the lull of that dreamy netherworld, he did not notice until too late that he had let go of the safety of the fountain.

"Grrr," the lion purred as he grabbed the teenager's shoulders and lifted him up off of the ground an inch or two. Marcelus tried to squirm out of Kara's grasp but he was not strong enough. The Thunderian eased the human onto the ground and got on top of him, straddling him, pressing together their nakedness, their flesh. A kind of lust came to the cub as he realized how intimate he was with the youth at that moment. And that he was not nervous. But then he was never nervous around boys that way. He had just never realized before that the closeness he enjoyed was something that could be craved.

Still thinking it was a game, Marcelus tried to get up from under the lion's weight. A mock struggle followed and the two tumbled about, hand in hand. Kara's flower came off his mane and fell on the grass. Their wrestling wilted the petals as their rolling bodies pounded it into the dirt.

"Marcelus," he whispered as he let go of the human's hands - his friend now no longer resisted. He arched his head up to be closer to the lion's, whose own face was dropping down slowly, trembling in uncertainty. Kara let his legs relax as he cupped the back of the teen's head in his paw. They got so close that they sensed the heat of their lips.

"Ahhh!" a girl screamed.

"Look!" someone else shouted.

The startled boys hastily separated and lay on their stomachs - they looked ashamed and afraid but they had not left each other's side.

"What are they?"

The two studied the scene around them - the voices were coming from another part of the garden. They had not realized that they had run off to a very remote and isolated part of the park.

"Thank Jagga," Kara said as he arose. The cub, more muscular than his companion, helped Marcelus to his feet. The teenagers hugged, letting their hands wander about the tensing contours of their backs.

The shouts from the others continued and brought them out of their euphoric haze back to reality. They ran across the fountains, around the bushes and past the trees until at last they had returned to the main entrance of the garden. There they found the girls looking forward to the sliding door and backward to the surrounding walls in a frenzy of terror, not wanting to see something horrid but not being able to resist either. The boys were covering themselves with their hands and retreating into the foliage.

Even Marcelus was spooked - he tried to drag Kara to the side for cover but his mind was elsewhere.

Huddled before the front steps were two children, their faces different and unusual. Clearly they were Thunderian, but deformed in a way he had never seen before. No, that was not entirely true. He had seen faces like theirs once. Perhaps that was why he was not afraid. And then -

Herding the silent children was a human around his own age. His eyes were a shade of violet, shimmering in a kind of wetness that hinted the passing of tears. Yet despite the sadness his face had an air of resolved confidence. His hair was dark and reached down to his shoulders. His clothes were a simple, white cotton vest, open to his unusually toned chest and a loose loincloth of the type fashionable among the upper echelons of Metropolitan society.

Kara stood, mouth agape, as he studied his mortal god's every move. He trembled at the sight of such perfection - quickly he spotted his robes and wrapped it around his waist.

"Children," the stranger said to the deformed Thunderians, "these are your brothers and sisters."

"That's enough!" a stern voice boomed. A new figure approached from the side. "These, children, don't belong here!" It was Marsala, the city's Master of Activities. "Those, children, have their own places." He stood at the edge of the portico, between the dark-haired youth and the entrance to the garden, wagging his finger defiantly.

The youth sighed and turned around - at once the children followed him back through the sliding doors that had opened without a sound.

"Go back to your play," Marsala said, looking across the park. The adolescents were emerging from their hiding spots. "There's nothing to see here, those _things_ are gone," he reassured them. "Kara," he said, noticing the lion. The cub was on the platform next to him by that time, inching toward the now-shut entrance. "Kara, I'm sorry you had to see that."

"Sorry?" he shook his head. "Sorry? It was like a dream, a heavenly dream."

The man set a friendly hand on the lion's shoulder. "What ever are you talking about, lad?" he asked.

The lion was oblivious to his surroundings. Marcelus, Mesilina and Agripina were already at his back but he had not noticed them. Approaching the sliding door, through which the demonic children had passed, he treaded past his friends and schoolmates, rapt in a trance, unable to shake off the image of that, that youth -

"Son? You're not upset?" the human asked again.

He turned to face Marsala. "Who was that?" _He's beautiful_ , he thought.

"His name is Caesar. Of lower noble blood. Works for a hospital that cares for the throwbacks."

"You must take me to him."

There was a look of bleak despair in the lion's eyes, a need, a longing that, though reluctant, Marsala knew all too well.

"Most of his time is spent underground. No place for a -"

"I am not afraid. I am a Thundercat."

"Of course."

The two walked out of the garden under the open archway the sliding door had temporarily made.

"You were not frightened by the children?"

"I can't say that I was," he answered, the door sliding shut behind him. He gave no parting glance to the green garden or his peers, who were once again engaging in their simple lives. "Something about their faces was familiar."

"Oh?" Marsala raised an eyebrow.

"Like I've seen faces like theirs before - and I certainly wasn't afraid of them then." He noticed that Marsala had stopped walking with him and was just standing there, looking dumbfounded. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing really." He scratched the back of his neck. "Perhaps it was in a dream where you saw those faces?"

"Maybe - but that Caesar!" He thought to himself, as he twirled his mane with his forefinger, that the hazel-eyed youth looked like an angel. He did not catch himself until too late: "Do you think he might, I don't know, like me, like a friend?"

"I don't know," he said, matter-of-factly.

"I'd like to find out." He donned on his white robes. "I want to experience his world," he said, "I want to know what he does, where he works. Hold nothing back."


	4. Chapter 4

Amid the ethereal clouds, the tallest tower of Metropolis loomed like an omnipotent eye, its vigilant gaze perpetually fixed upon the mere materiality of the world below. At the very crown tip - colored like the symbolic flag of long, lost Thundera - was the office of the Lord of the Thundercats. From the outside its windows formed a ring of blackened rectangles that gave no hint, no sparse clue of the quiet, somber inside.

The chamber's doors opened and for a moment a slant of light seeped into the room and swept over the golden inscription that was carved above the unused, official throne: 'Purest of the Pure.' A man in a blue, yellow uniform entered the darkness of the spacious office. It took him a second or two for his eyes to adjust to the eternal dim but he was so used to the effect already that it seldom bothered him anymore.

Left to right he squinted as he tried to get a panoramic sense of the austere interior. "Sir?" he asked at length, clearing his throat. "Sir, your secretary said I could come in."

A chair in the distance shifted in a long, pronounced creak. A figure leaned forward over a semicircular desk and spoke: "Doctor Pallas. Indeed, you said it was urgent."

"Your son was in my office this morning, for his weekly treatment. Well," he cleared his throat again and looked down to the floor, stalling, trying to gather together the words. "Well, it's something that I've noticed happening for a while now and he's begun to see it, too."

"What is it exactly?" he asked, dispassionately.

"Our treatment is failing."

Phaeton's sigh was as loud and as chilling as a pang of thunder.

Pallas continued: "We always knew this day would come -"

The seated figure nodded his head.

"Admittedly, it's happened earlier than we feared," again he paused to clear his throat, "the problem was more serious than we had believed."

An awkward pause followed. The lord leaned back on his chattering chair, his silhouette revealing murky hints of his hidden features. The doctor turned his eyes away - partly out of respect, partly out of fear - toward the portrait of the Lady Xenobia, the late lioness.

"What do you suggest we do?"

"Breed him and quickly. If he does it now -"

"He's barely out of boyhood -"

"The sooner the better. Your brother took long to mate and you know what happened to -"

"Yes, yes," Phaeton said, relenting, his hands over his face. He remembered it well - it could have been quite a scandal had anyone outside his most intimate circle known the truth, but his brother and sister-in-law were put away and the rest was properly taken care-of. "You are right, of course, Pallas. If it has to be done, then so be it. I'll have Marsala choose a suitable, candidate, but I'll be the one to tell my son the facts. I want him to hear it from me and me alone."

"Understood, sir."

Again he sighed as though realizing just then something he should have known all along. "He's been sheltered from the truth long enough, I suppose," the lord said in pensive thought, drumming his fingers over the tabletop - and with that he turned his chair around, its shrill squeak echoing through the air.

The doctor scratched the back of his head, adjusted his collar and turned around to leave from whence he had entered.


	5. Chapter 5

Despite Marsala's objections, the stubborn lion was determined to have his way. He wanted to know more about the throwbacks, the untouchables of society, not so much because of any perverse curiosity toward them, but because it was, in essence, a part of Caesar's world. Caesar - his crush was not something he felt he could talk to the Master of Activities about, despite the fact that he was very comfortable and otherwise open with the man.

Kara pled with him and at the end used the excuse of wanting to see the machines - as it turned out that much of the underworld he was allowed to see.

Still, his brothers? It stuck in his mind like nothing else. And then Marsala's question resurfaced. Why had he not been afraid?

A bell rung in the elevator and its alarm brought the youngster out of his trance. The five-mile trip had taken so long - even for the turbo-lifts - that he had lost himself in his ever-evolving fantasy world.

"We are one hundred feet below the surface," Marsala announced. Even before the doors had opened the air was already clearly hot and muggy. "Stick by me, son, don't try to wander off."

Past the open doors of the car was a long corridor kept at a low degree of light. Glass hatches and multicolored panels adorned the walls. Every so often, at random intervals, the sides were interrupted by the bright intersection of perpendicular halls in which a combination of half-breeds - engineers by trade - and foremen conversed freely.

Kara caught scant views of the people only - the blue, yellow uniforms of the professionals had emblems on the sleeves that designated gradations of field or speciality while the throwbacks wore brown uniforms with red numbers stenciled on their left breasts. Their outfits were clean, tidy, their fur kept prim. Since the foremen had day-to-day contact with the masters, it was thought proper that at least they would be presentable.

As he studied them from quick glances the more he realized that he had in fact - and not in dreams - seen such faces before. He saw nothing ugly about them, the Thunderians society had expunged itself of, indeed, he was quite acutely aware of the beauty of their shapely, manly forms. Firm, strong bodies, built from constant toil, it almost seemed as if they had been bred to be supermen in every way.

"Here," his would-be guide said. "Here's one of the power generators." Kara found himself on a balcony, peering into the deeper depths below. Strong spotlights were fixed on the machine that was as large and as vast as the chrome-topped towers of the city of light above. Pipes and vents jetted out from its top and sides, curled behind it and deviated upward to the effective ceiling. The actual form of the dynamo was lost, the bulk of its frame hidden behind long, finger-like shadows for it was mostly buried in rock and the lights were not strong enough to break through the profuse conflagration of secondary structures. Steam puffed out of bellows and heaving pistons. The very ground shook and even the balcony, so far removed from the immediacy of the scene, vibrated in a dense timber.

Little, tiny men, like half-naked, cat-apes, lumbered about the working parts of the gargantuan device, feeding it coal, tweaking its dials, adjusting its levers in a macarbe dance that went on and on around the clock.

"Don't they ever rest?" the lion asked.

"Once every ten hours."

"Ten hours!" His eyes widened in a gasp of shock all their own. He followed a train of workers as they inched up the iron façade of the generator.

"No need to worry, it's been that way for centuries and everything is still in working order."

"What does Caesar do here exactly?"

Up at the apex of the large, inverted 'u' that bounded the invisible parts of the machine, were a column of mercury and an array of spinning governors. A dial on a pedestal near the thermometer regulated the excess heat produced by the throbbing behemoth. A single worker had his hands on the control turning it left, right, ever so slightly, to keep the conditions below maximal operational tolerances.

"Well, his is a humanitarian group that runs a hospital. They take care of injured workers and fit them for new uniforms. He tries to use his influence to better their conditions."

"Does he keep company with them?"

"I suppose so - but, well, dealing with them wouldn't be like the way we do things. Theirs is a different society, if you can call it that."

A single worker, clad in sooty, shredded cloths, filed past the two. Marsala tried to act as if nothing had happened but Kara took notice, letting his eyes wander. Below the ashy surface, beneath the grime -

"It's like a whole new world's been opened to me."

" _Hahahaha!" a dry throat laughed, masking in its cackle the sound of a salt sprinkling upon the pool's turbulent waters._

"It isn't meant for you," the Master of Activities said, turning to the cub. "You must think of higher things, better things than this underworld."

"I wonder if Caesar could use help."

"Kara, you don't yet realize your importance. You are a Thunderian noble; this is no place for you, no matter how well-meaning your intentions might be."

"I'm a Thundercat, we're supposed to help, Marsala. It's in our code -"

Marsala sighed - how was he to explain it - "You are only young, that's all, you'll soon see the ways of this world. What can and cannot be done."

The throwback in charge of the thermometer had slipped on a puddle of condensation - the smoke and haze had obscured the sight, the distance and ambient din had masked the sound of his piercing screams as he fell. Without him at his post the temperature ran up unregulated, exponentially. In response the pistons jammed, sparks arced across the air from one stack of coils to another.

The ground rumbled. The two on the overlooking balcony ducked down as a plume of gray haze puffed up from the depths. Frantic shouts followed. Kara leaned forward amid the chaos that ensued around him. Marsala tried in vein to hold him back. Unprepared workers were ejected from their posts or were just knocked out cold by the intense blasts that came later in rapid succession. Flickering bands of red-orange crackled in the pits around the machine and, as the hoards of innocents backed in the hellish fire, it seemed to the lion that the generator - no more than a man-made, earthly device - had been transformed by the flames into a beast of satanic dimensions, a horrific demon that with its pipes and dangling wires dragged the unsuspecting, malformed Thunderians into the chewing teeth of its metallic mouths to their doom.

He screamed in terror as he turned back, just as the vision faded into the fog. Fire extinguishers had subsided the flames and already a new workforce was on the scene to continue the machinations of the dynamo. Spare men were busy collecting the wounded and the mangled bodies of the dead.

Kara collapsed into Marsala's arms in semi-embrace that was not fought off or rejected. The man patted his mane as though to comfort him. The lion-cub whispered: "Take me to my father."


	6. Chapter 6

It would not appear obvious from the outside that anything at all ever happened in the office of the Lord of the Thundercats. The secretary was on the floor beneath for one thing and then there was the fact that the lights were always kept off or dim - it had not always been that way. But then, no one ever really questioned the benevolent master himself.

Standing in the middle of the room was Julia, the eldest daughter and official representative of Livia. The humans were, theoretically, second in command only, but in practice much of what had been the responsibility of the Thundercats had fallen upon the hands of the Amazonians. She was running through a list of security items to an attentive Phaeton, who, as always, remained in shadow.

"Over the past several months," the well-shielded woman said, "we have been detecting minor instances of clandestine activity among the throwbacks."

"We had an execution today. Would you call that minor?"

"Those three were, of course, the extreme. They must have acted on their own, apart from the other movement we've detected - we found none of the usual papers on them."

"Are you sure they weren't agents or part of a rouse to distract our attention?"

"The plans they did have were far more sophisticated. It must have taken them the better part of a year to produce them. What we usually find - when we find anything among the conspirators - are scraps, tissues, drawn erratically with ash or blood sometimes. Those three had a different style all together."

"Hmmm," he leaned back and seemed to rub his chin. "Well, we don't often ever see such determined, conceited efforts from them, anyway. What does it matter? The truth will out. Anything else?"

Just as she was about to answer, a sudden and unexpected disturbance came from the world outside. Acting on instinct Phaeton crawled up out of his chair into the darkness. Julia, on the other hand, spun around to confront the doors - that had hen opened.

"Kara?" she asked, a little confused. Her meetings with Lord Phaeton were always private and with the highest level of security. That and she had never seen the cub so hysterical.

"Father?" he asked. Once completely in the chamber his eyes scanned the interior from side to side. "Father," he said, in tears.

"Kara, what's the matter?" She wrapped an arm around his back and with her free hand pushed back his mane to wipe his cheek.

An out-of-breath Marsala stammered into the office, closing the doors behind him. He looked around but not to find Kara - indeed, he had only taken partial notice of Julia. It was a shape within the shadows that alerted him and told him where to go.

"Oh, um, Julia," he said, stopping to look at her for a moment. "Forgive the intrusion. Sir, I tried to stop him."

"That's all right," Phaeton reassured his Master of Activities. "My son can meet me when ever he wishes," he said, adding sternly: "perhaps next time he'll knock first."

Julia had petted the youngster into a state of calm. She looked at the recess of the chamber where now two shadows, side-by-side, stood at watch. "My lord, I have little else to add to my report. If you'd dismiss me -"

"Yes, you are dismissed, Lady Julia." He nodded from the darkness.

She gave the cub a slight peck on the cheek - a light gesture and no more. She often acted like a mother to the boy. "Take care," she whispered then vanished out of the doors.

He watched her leave then stood there, in the slant of light from the only open window. The room was quiet and tense. "Father," he said as two silhouetted forms made their way to him. "Let me hold you," he reached out but Marsala stepped into view to hold him back.

"What's going on here?" The old lion growled.

"It's my fault. He wanted to see a part of the underworld, so I showed him a dynamo."

"Is that so? You brought my son down there?"

"He was adamant. Something happened earlier today that sparked his interest."

"I wanted to see my brothers," Kara said, trying desperately to touch even the hem of his father's robe.

"Did he see their faces, Marsala?"

"I saw them, everything."

"And you were not afraid?"

"No - they're beautiful faces, father."

Phaeton and Marsala seemed to look at each other for a moment in that weak ambiance. The lord's expression was masked by the darkness. The man acted only more apologetically. He whispered something that made the Thundercat leader draw back.

It was at that time that Kara began to relate the story, starting from the events of the afternoon. He had just come back from his appointment with his doctors and wanted to relax in the Imperial Garden - notice that he said nothing about meeting with friends in the garden. After playing a game of tag he was startled by the screams of the other youngsters. He ran to the scene and saw the malformed children - notice that he made no mention of Caesar. That had been the incident Marsala had hinted of. It had caused an old memory to resurface and a curiosity that like all cat curiosity had to be satisfied. He told his father that he had forced the human to take him down there. And then, at the end, he related the experience of what he saw at the power station. The explosions, the hellish fires. In the minutest detail he recalled what had unfolded before his eyes. He ended with the picture of how the men were falling into the red-orange flames.

On a chair he sobbed into his paws. He felt strange, furry warmth on his shoulder that was not completely familiar. He turned to see but by then it was too late.

"Such things are to be expected. They are inevitable," the grown-up lion said to the man-cub.

"And that's it? Father, you are the Lord of the Thundercats. Don't you care?"

No answer.

"It's our job to help people who can't help themselves. And they are people, under the smog and dirt; they are beautiful people, like what the ancient Thunderians must have been like."

Silence.

"Theirs were the hands that built this city. But where are the hands in your plan?"

"Where they belong - in the depths."

Kara looked at Marsala. His stone face was expressionless. "How can you be so cruel? I don't understand - Code of Thundera!"

"Kara, be reasonable! This isn't as simple as you think -"

"No! I won't hear it!" He stood and wrapped his arms around his ears. His face was painted in a newfound terror more horrific than his fiery visions of the underworld gone awry. A new kind of horror he thought - now hoped - was impossible.

Marsala tried to approach him but that only shocked the young lion that then turned tail and stormed out of the room.

"Don't -" Phaeton said. "Let him go. Let him work this out on his own. He's young, that's all. He'll grow up, we all did."

The man returned to his master's side and helped him stagger onto his favorite chair - the one before the circular desk.

"I'm sorry I took him down there."

Phaeton reached up and rubbed the stubble under his advisor's chin. "Don't be, you know him better than I do, old friend. Once he gets his mind on something, nothing can stop his -"

"Much like someone else I know."

The cat purred - then something, some stray thought brought him back out of that lulled trance. "The doctors say he's reverting."

The news caught Marsala's tongue for a moment. "What are you going to do?"

"We have to mate him - fast. Look over his schoolmates; find an appropriate lioness. All the top noble families are a part of his class. Anyone of them will do."

Marsala stood and nodded in compliance. "Will you tell him? Everything?"

"What he needs to know only," the lion answered, turning his head to that small, side chamber. "For the rest he'll have a whole lifetime to get used to."


	7. Chapter 7

The ragged peaks of Metropolis were crowned with permanent layers of dense, misshapen clouds the color of gray metal. The coincidence of their hue to the shade of the up-most edifices was no accident, no happy side effect of blind inspiration. It was designed to be so in cold, political fashion. For if it was hard to tell the heavens apart from the towers, then was it not also difficult to distinguish their inhabitants from the gods?

Just under the rarefied, restricted levels of the nobles and blue bloods, down to the blackened surface, were the sectors of the city reserved for the lofty middle classes, the half-breeds and common folk of low birth. The professionals, who possessed important degrees of knowledge, were considered by the ordinary populace to be 'first among equals' and so were placed in those positions above the others. The tradesmen and artisans, who in their own particular way beautified and animated the sterile, urban atmosphere with their esteemed culture, were given a slightly lesser degree of importance. The merchants, who provided the material and financial lifeblood important to the day-to-day vitality of Metropolis, were kept nearer the bottom yet they were by no means downtrodden for more often than not they represented the richer families from which the majority of the upper-crust of society originated.

Kara had eased his way out of school without notice - or so he hoped - and, armed with meager recollections of the mechanics of his past trip to the underworld, he boarded one of the very same turbo-lifts he had ridden in with Marsala but got off down at levels immediately before the boundary to the forbidden, surface zone. Working on little more than instinct - for Marsala had expressly told him never to enter those sectors - he thought for sure that he would be able to find Caesar in that general area. To be sure he was uneasy, he had never disobeyed his superiors that way, that defiantly and so he was anxious, wary even.

Especially unnerving was the damp, humid air that circulated through levels that he searched - was unused to that kind of hostility but it was more than the elements that seemed inhospitable. He was immediately struck by how out-of-place he felt as he maneuvered through the vast, almost formless crowds. He felt alone, utterly alone as the pressure of eyes studied him, the harshness of snarled, annoyed faces hurled at his direction.

The people had clothes but there was not much to their garments. The Thunderians for one had next to nothing on. Again on instinct alone he reasoned that if he wanted to blend in, then his robe simply would not do.

He ducked into a side street and behind a parked vehicle he took off what he wore. The soot and ash that regularly plumed up from Third Earth's surface had singed the once white and pristine cloth with a brown-gray grime. 'Perfect,' he thought as he tore a large section off of the back with his claws. Quickly, the lion fashioned the rough strip into a loincloth and discarded the rest in a pile on the curb. He was pleased with the results but it occurred to him perhaps too late that his was much tighter than the others. Nevertheless, he convinced himself that no one would notice, or care and with that he set on again, out to resume his search.

Now he looked more like the natives and yet he sensed that he did not entirely fit in. It was not a new revelation to him; it was a familiar feeling, one that he had come to know very well. Starting almost as soon as those first, few days of preschool, when Marsala had introduced him to the children of the other nobles, yes, he knew from as far back as that that he was not part of the group, alike his peers. But what he never understood was why, why did the other Thunderians not like him? Surely the felines must have seen something in him that neither he nor the humans noticed. He had no one he could talk to about it, indeed, for the longest time he did not even have the words to communicate the idea to anyone. Such was his world and after a while, without resistance, he came to accept it, he just assumed that he was supposed to be alone.

And that was why it was so important for him to find Caesar - it was a hope, dim and uncertain, that perhaps with him he could break free from that personal isolation.

No - at last it came to him, he saw exactly why he was different at least down there, in the lower levels of the city. It was his walk, his manner. His very looks, un-battered by work and toil, were alien to the area's denizens. For their own part the people were unfamiliar to him, too - their language, inflections, cordiality. He found that, in response to his sudden bout of self-consciousness, his hands were in constant motion, frequently covering his face with the excuse of scratching.

Choking and suffocating in the throngs, he thought that the only way to relief was to break away from the crowds. Pushing his way through tight groups, cutting across lines and jumping over barriers, he stumbled inadvertently onto a part of town that was eerily quiet. The only sounds that echoed in the cavernous streets were those of the rolling sidewalks he had just escaped from and humming. He looked down - though still, his feet vibrated. It was a familiar sensation and with the bellowing of a gray haze it occurred to him that he was much closer to the planet's surface than he had believed.

He did not turn around, despite the seedy atmosphere, the blinking, neon lights. He was comfortable in the relative shadows that the larger, rising buildings around the scene provided. A speeding vehicle appeared from the distance, its sirens and red spinning lights startled the lion in its sudden arrival. He hid behind a metal crate that brimmed over with burnt and shredded scraps of what had once been a house, now partly demolished. The strange car slowed around the area of the bin and seemed to stop for a moment or two.

He looked about him, past the empty lots, toward the backs of whitewashed buildings of brick and mortar, ancient structures he had only seen before in picture books. He feared that his quest was over, that all was lost. He wondered how badly he would be punished back home where his father and the Master of Activities, the official representative of the Lord of the Thundercats would find out.

But without notice the vehicle sped away, splashing through the pools of brackish filth in its way - it windows were thick and blackened and offered no hint of its interior. He sighed and almost laughed in delight. He was again alone - or so he thought. He stood and the hot, muggy air attained a biting chill. The sound of sprinkling, of sand or salt pouring came to his ears from both everywhere and nowhere at once.

Kara ran out of the scene, terrified - and then as if all at once his strength was sapped. He stopped, huddled over, his head hot and aching. The world was spinning, darkening in a haze of confusion. An array of new, unexpected sounds - notably a crackling laughter - surrounded him. He had without thinking returned to the rolling sidewalks and was now a prisoner of a new mob. Where were they going? What was he doing there? - his mind reeled with endless questions as he wandered about in circles, unable to concentrate.

Limping at last to the side, he tried desperately to reach the anonymity of shadow but he had no energy, no will. He stumbled on his knees over the concrete and there, on his side, he lay still. A hand grasped his shoulder and with that he remembered no more.


	8. Chapter 8

When he awoke he had no idea where he was, how long he had been there, or - more importantly - what had happened to him. With a long, loud exhale he rubbed his eyes, letting them adjust to the ambient light. He could tell he was in a room, small and intimate, with painted, plaster walls. A door was to the left, shut but hopefully unlocked. A window was to his side; its blinds down, letting in only thin slants of filtered sun.

Convinced that he was alone in that silent, bare chamber, he pulled back the sheets that were tightly wrapped around his body and tried to get up from the bed.

A hand - that same hand from before - caught hold of his arm and kept him reclined on the mattress.

"What?" Kara asked, looking up and around, finding no one.

"Don't be afraid - you're safe now."

That voice, the very same voice, was coming from behind.

"What happened to me?" A thin strip of cloth was placed around his brow. It had been dabbed in ethylene alcohol and both its cool feel and sweet scent were strangely comforting.

"You must have been hit on the head or had a nasty fall or something," the still unseen man answered, massaging the lion's head and temples.

Kara arched his back in a vain attempt to see him. "I honestly can't remember. I did feel lightheaded and disoriented."

The strip was removed and then the hand petted his mane, its fingers caressing the outline of his ears. The touch did not bother or shock the young lion - he welcomed it, encouraged it with his soft purring.

"There, there," he said in whisper, in a tone as dulcet as sugary silk. "You're all right now." The man stepped out from behind into the slants of thin light that shone from the blocked-out window. "You're not from these parts, are you?" he spoke casually. "Did you get lost?" He took the sheets the lion had pushed aside in an effort to re-cover his near-naked body.

The Thunderian clasped the human's hands in his own to stop him - he looked at last into his now-revealed face. "Caesar!" He sat up swiftly at the visual confirmation of what he had hoped, what he had wanted to be true. "No, no, I'm not lost, not anymore."

The well-built man let go of the blankets - they fell limp over the lion's legs. Kara eased his head up - their eyes met and for what felt like endless, eternal moments they were lost in the wet, glimmering orbs of the gateways to their souls. Caesar was the first to break away from that ethereal coupling; he was distracted by a sound that he sensed coming the door.

"We must be careful," he said. "How do you know me?"

"I saw you in a garden a few days ago."

"A garden?" He paused, rubbing his chin in thought. "Yes," he nodded at length, looking away, almost in shame. "I hope I really didn't scare you, or anyone."

"I wasn't afraid." Kara took hold of the man's cheek and turned his face over to meet his. He stroked his black hair, noticing only then that his own fingers were smudged with ink.

Caesar looked down around the lion's waist and gingerly ran his fingers across the dingy fabric of his garments that though tight and distorted was - "I remember you now, you didn't crawl away. Are you sure you weren't afraid?"

"I'm sure I'm sure," he said with an added grin. "I thought they were adorable. And the adults are just absolutely gorgeous."

"You think so?" he asked, cheerfully surprised. "You've seen any of them?" The lion nodded in answer. "Hahaha, I've always thought so, too." He chuckled a little more. "I've always been attracted to them, always, I think they're beautiful, all of them."

"And I think you're beautiful, too, all of you." Kara let his hands that were around Caesar's shoulders, dip down to lightly explore his back.

As the man looked at the lion, he saw something in the Thunderian's face, in the lines and shadows the dim light produced and magnified, that he found irresistibly charming. He leaned in closer, to the point where their lips almost touched, but he broke away - again - and at the end all they could do was giggle in the heightened excitement they both felt at that moment.

"But I still don't know who you are?"

"My name is Kara."

A strange expression came to him and after the shock passed he whispered: "You mean _that_ Kara? The Thunder -"

"Yes, that's me."

"What are _you_ doing down here?" He looked around the room carefully, suspiciously. "We must be extra-careful. Um," he stammered in utter nervousness. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gotten so close." His hazel eyes were again pointed down as if he was embarrassed.

"Oh, come now," he took the man's hand in his own paw and brought it up to his ready mane. "I'm a cat, I love being petted you silly human," he teased.

"I might be a noble, too, but I'm not at your level, if people ever found out -"

"What does that matter? What do people have to know anyway?"

He purred as his mane was fretted with.

"You're not like the others, I'm very surprised," he spoke at length. "Would you like to see what we do here?"

Kara stood up from bed just then as he had wanted to all along. "I'd love to - I'd like to help, too, if you need it."

"You sly lion," he laughed. "We could always use more help. Of course, we'll have to give you another name. Wouldn't want to attract too much attention. How about, hmmm -"

"Liono."

"Liono?" he smiled, adding: "Sure, why not?"

Caesar told him that they were in an modest, area hospital, one of only a handful in Metropolis that admitted throwbacks, one that had been run by his parents before an accident had killed them when he was very young and that he had found to be more homely and comforting than anything else he had known in that snobbish world above. The two walked out of the room into the main corridor of that floor. Nurses and doctors in white, lab coats strutted through the passage, room to room, lost in the machinations of their respective jobs.

The man began his impromptu tour by explaining the reason everyone was so busy. "Several days ago one of the dynamos overheated and exploded." The simple words brought back nightmarish visions and vivid memories in the lion's mind but he did not interrupt. "Five workers died on the scene, another five more died here. The rest are in intensive care right now. Some might be out in a few days if they just have minor injuries; some might be here days, even weeks before they must return to the underworld. One or two, I'm afraid, might never be able to work again, ever."

"What happens to them, if they can't?" He stopped as he passed an open door and looked in to see a group of nurses applying bandages to an injured, burned, malformed Thunderian.

"If it wasn't for places like this," he said, nudging him forward, "they would just be allowed to starve to death in a cell somewhere. Here we train them to do other, less demanding jobs."

Caesar wanted to show him more but it seemed that there just was not enough time. For Kara's part - or Liono's, as he was being introduced - every second with that silly, sweet human was like an eternity of blissful euphoria. He was like a god and the lion felt he had no choice but to worship him. He was grateful then for the empty lobby they had wandered into. He wanted to say something, something anything out of the blue but the dark-haired man cut him off with a coy and playful peck on his cheek.

The two hugged and laughed uncontrollably for a passing, fleeting moment. Caesar fondled the lion's pointy, hidden ears. Kara ran his paws up and down the man's back.

"It doesn't have to be this way, you know, but someday, someday soon we'll be living in a better world than this. I know it. I believe it, Kara. This hell we created for ourselves can't possibly last forever. Evil always fails, no matter how powerful or invincible it might seem to be."

Again he wanted to say something -

"Ah, there you are," came a sharp, feline voice - the two stepped apart in that sudden intrusion. A cheetah doctor in a blue, yellow uniform, walked up to Caesar. I was just about to page you."

"Yes, doctor?"

"That lion cub you found on the street, well, his fingerprints were recognized."

He looked at his hands, at the dark stains on his short fur around his digits.

She looked down and flipped a few pages on her clipboard then turned her face back up to the man. "They wouldn't say who they were or who the teenager is," she paraphrased what she had scribbled. "They just said they'd be here shortly to pick him up."

"Thank you, doctor," the human said, cordially. "We'll be waiting here for them - who ever they are - to come."

The cheetah nodded and with a flash vanished, a smear of blue, yellow trailing her swift movement through the otherwise still air.

The two looked at each other nervously.

"I hope my father isn't too angry at me."

"I'm sure he couldn't be mad at you, for long," he patted the lion's chest lightly over his heart.

"No matter what happens, I'll be back - I promise."

"I -"

Mechanical glass doors slid open and let a gust of cold wind into the small, cushy lobby. Potted plants shivered, their wide, green leaves rustled together. Magazines on an end table shifted to the side, their glossy pages flapping about wildly until the doors shut and the effect subsided.

Heavy, thudded footsteps stopped about ten feet from the pair, approaching no further. The two friends turned around to see who had intruded upon yet another of their private moments.

"Marsala," Kara gasped, the face of the Master of Activities was long and cast in shadow despite the intense light from the hanging, fluorescent fixtures above. The lion approached him anxiously, taking several looks back at Caesar all the while. "I'm sorry if I worried you."

"Let's go home, son, it's late and you cut a whole day of school - you have some explaining to do." He clasped the youngster by the arm, surprisingly very gently and directed him to the door.

"I -" he tried to speak as he looked back once more, but he managed only a slight wave before vanishing past the sliding, glass doors.

In the rear of the car, that then began to drive away, Marsala turned to the youth and said: "I know what you're going through, but it's just a phase, it'll pass. You must remember that you have duties, responsibilities." He stopped for a moment, took a breath and looked away. "Your life will be changing very soon and you must be prepared for it. You can't be doing things like this anymore."

"What do _you_ know about what I'm going through?"

 _More than you know_ \- he thought but gave no answer.


	9. Chapter 9

That single classroom was larger than the apartments of most of the residents of Metropolis. No lights were on but none were needed for while three of its four walls were made a shiny, bright metal, ornate with shelves and doorways to other parts of the building, the fourth one did not exist at all, at least not really. The whole left side of the chamber was a series of ten windows, five feet wide, one hundred feet high and separated by thin, iron pillars. Clouds, crisp and icy, swirled across the view and spread minute crystals of snow on the edges of the panes. White sky loomed above while ever-sharpening profiles of tall buildings breaking through the thinning haze seemed to plummet to a darkness of unimaginable depths below.

Only about twenty-five students filled the center portions of the room. Up front were the older males of various Thunderian noble families. Behind them where the female humans - including Mesilina, who kept sneaking sly, backward glances. The rest of the space was a mixture of various origins in no particular order. Only at the very end were Kara and Marcelus. The lion-cub tended to fall to the rear of classes that were not his favorite subjects, in often-vain attempts to go unnoticed. As for the man-child, he was always there with him at his side, his right arm of support.

The observed of all observers, he seemed interested in what his classmates were discussing, which was more attention than he would usually give them. He had something of an opinion on the matter and, considering the topic, he was a bit of an 'authority.' But he kept silent; he said not a word, preferring to let them continue babbling secure in their illusions.

"Oh, Draconis, you can be encourageable," said a human female to scarcely bearded panther. "Everyone knows it exists - at least it did back then."

"I have to agree with her," Typhonis added. Everyone turned to face the quiet tiger. "Back when Third Earth was, shall we say, less civilized." The Warrior Maidens raised an eyebrow as slight giggles came from the other students. The albino tiger waited for it to subside before continuing. "Once it wasn't need anymore it just, went back."

"Back where?" Draconis persisted.

"Back where ever Jagga pulled it out of!"

A stern tiger interrupted the manic laughter that followed. "Enough talk of this nonsense!" He added the wave of his bare, red-black striped arm for emphasis. "The Sword of Omens is a myth. All the Lords of the Thundercats from as far back as written records go have firmly denied its existence."

_In that small, somber, clandestine room, the Lord of the Thundercats sighed as he stroked his fingers across the length of the shortened blade. It was the very Sword of Omens, the object of his vain worship, the mystical weapon so long kept hidden that only the ruling family knew of its existence. It rested on a stand before the Claw Shield, in its seemingly permanent six-inch mode. Its eye closed shut, nothing more than a line of black, on either side encompassed by a semicircle of brown, like an eyelid. Quietly it slumbered in that chamber, never stirring, never responding, in a stasis that had lasted millennia, ever since the astrophysical configuration that had been the conduit of its power had, by the laws of natural philosophy, come undone in that unending dance of stars that was the universe - and as he looked upon the spiritless sword, he was thankful that for his whole reign there had never been a problem so grave that -_

"Long ago," the red, purebred Siberian said, pointing up, "it was Thunderian engineering that put an end to the dark forces of MummRa when it was discovered by our scientists that the electromagnetic fields of our technology kept him and the ancient spirits of evil confined to their pyramid."

_A single hand, gray and withered - cobwebs visible beneath broken scabs of rotted flesh - fingers loosely bandaged, skimmed over the surface of the violent pool:_

"And as time passed, human and Thunderian cooperation has ensured Metropolis's continuing success. Why, we have expanded our society to the very edges of Third Earth."

_Sparkling, red powders were diffused in the collimating waters._

"No," the tiger lecturer stopped to fill his lungs with air but a newfound blockage in his throat made him choke. He could feel the oblong mass clogging the back of his mouth as he clutched his neck. It was a mass that had formed so suddenly that he had no time - or will - to question where it had come from. Doubled over, he collapsed to the floor, heaving dry gasps, just as several students got up and reached him.

" _Mwahahahahahaha!"_

Kara thought he had heard something, something familiar. He turned to the side but Marcelus was not there. Upon his desk was his language book, open to random page, notes stuffed between sheets, pen rolling down the tabletop until it slid off and landed on the unoccupied seat. He reached over to pick it up, feeling the warmth of the chair with his fingertips, looking to the front of the class just then to see that the lecture he had been paying no attention to had come to an end. To his surprise it was with much ruckus - he had been so lost in his fantasy world that he was oblivious to what was happening around him.

He saw the humans and noble cats scurrying around the naked, red tiger on the floor, on his back unresponsive to their violent first-aid application. Odd, but for a moment he thought, he actually thought that his fellow seniors were devouring their fallen instructor. He put away his notebook, whose lined pages were filled with the name 'Caesar' and shrugged off the image just as a team of medics entered the classroom.


	10. Chapter 10

The full weight of what had happened dawned on Kara. His spirit was filled with a sense of shame and his mind reeled in a stream of unanswerable questions that repeated over and over. 'What could have happened?' 'What could I have done?' 'How could I have helped?' 'Who will teach us now?' and, strangest of all, 'What will his family do?' He had never had really thought of such things before - all his life his future was assured, his livelihood inherited without care to his merits or qualifications. While others had to work and toil to support themselves and the city, his time was idled away in play. While others had to struggle to earn their respect, his fame would be handed down to him as if by the gods above.

A bad taste came to his mouth, dry and sticky, perhaps it had always been that way, perhaps not, it was only then that he noticed it.

Out in an open-air courtyard of concrete and steel, the males of various species filed past him with hardly a glance to the side - except for Marcelus who waved a warm good-bye. That group was headed to a nearby recreation room. Soon the girls would follow them there but for the moment they were gathered around the unfrilled banks that surrounded a series of red-marble pillars. The females were discussing something, something tawdry and gossipy. Every so often one of them would sneak a wicked glance at the lion-cub.

Kara paced about mindlessly, lost in a world of his own creation.

A hand touched his robed back. He turned to see - it was Mesilina. Agripina was already strutting up to him, too.

"It's a shame what happened back there," the Warrior Maiden began.

He nodded, his mind still somewhat numbed.

"Thrax was such a cute-looking tiger, too." She rubbed her hands over his exposed biceps that had oddly begun to develop lately. His fur was short and soft, his flesh was untensed.

"Yes, he was, I mean," he caught himself in a trap of the tongue, "it is a shame."

The girls about the red columns giggled uncontrollably, their hands covering their curled lips.

"You want to come to the garden later?"

"I -"

"He can't," the lioness said, catching her breath. "He's going to be busy today, aren't you, Kara?"

"Um, um," it was not nervousness but a caught-off-guard absentmindedness that caused him to trip over his words. "Marsala said my father wanted to see me later."

"So you haven't been told?" she pondered aloud, regretting the leak.

"Told me what?"

"No, um, never mind." She grabbed Mesilina by the arm and all but dragged her back to the chattering girls who sat watch attentively from within the cool shade of the imposing, circular towers of crimson rock.

He watched the two fade back into the small mob, their faces and forms melting into an indiscernible obscurity of cruel viciousness - eyes that stared, lips that laughed, fingers that pointed. He wondered how anyone at all could be attracted to that and, thoroughly repulsed, he recoiled from the scene before it could infest him with worser thoughts of vile and dread. But it was the feeling of self-consciousness that disturbed him more. He had experienced it unmasked already, that day he had snuck down to see Caesar so he knew full well that it was more than just the girl's foul teasing, it permeated the entire society.

What was it? What could it be?

Across a hall and into an adjacent room, he hid and shut the door behind him. Out of breath from his hasty jog to cover, he paused there in the semi-darkness until he had regained his composure.

A single, square window, five feet in front of him, was the only source of light visible in that closet that was cramped with an assortment of gray uniforms, the types the school custodians wore. He stepped silently to the glass, a slight but perceptible image of his face reflected off of the clear pane. But he paid no attention to the shadows and strange, new lines that had evolved around his features; instead he opened the portal, disappointed to find a thin, wire mesh on the other side.

The pressure difference across the boundary was substantial and a strong breeze leaked out of the room. A web-spinning spider shook violently in the current then fell onto the inner sill, its legs upward, fretting quickly in terror until it had uprighted itself. The minuscule creature scurried to the corner where it was safe in the crevices.

Kara stared out of the window for what must have been forever - his mane waving all the while until the current had at last waned. He stared in wonder and adoration at the immense structures of Metropolis: the ornate towers and solemn temples of titanic grandeur, the snakelike bridges and, catching his eye, were the small planes that hovered between buildings, taking their passengers from one part of Third Earth to another. He stared and as the minutes passed his attention sunk downward, to where light dimmed, to where shadow was ever-present.

He wanted to examine the depths, too, but the thin, immovable restrained kept him back.

But then, or he could look from afar or he could go there himself.

The lion removed his white robe, opting for more humble attire. The clothes of a laborer would do just nicely in his plan. He searched the racks for a set of shorts his size then completed the outfit with a fluff, loose shirt. Ruffling his hair - not that the wind had done little do dishevel it - he snickered thinking that no one would recognize him in the made-up guise of Liono, his alter ego.

Carefully he opened the closet door and just casually came out while no one was watching.

He knew that Marsala had tightened security around the turbo-lifts so he had to find another course to the lower levels. The only thing that came to mind was the course that the driver had taken from Caesar's hospital so he decided to backtrack along that trail.

Exiting the school, he strolled through an area of Metropolis that was very close to where the nobles officially resided - the crests and colors of numerous, individual clans adorned the sky. Flags and other symbolic decorations hung from the bases of buildings, flapping over the horizontal, glass squares that protected the streets from the elements. Around him were crowds of businessman in hats who were too busy arguing stock prices to have bothered to notice him - his invisibility was, in a way, reassuring.

A turn into a corner brought him before what looked like a religious temple. Tall, wide columns, evenly spaced, supported a triangular roof of rough granite. Carved faces, protruding heads - lion heads, almost reminiscent of throwbacks in character, the areas around their snarled mouths corroded green - sitting over the pillars seemed to guard the establishment, frightening away those bothersome evil spirits that populated the worlds of ancient superstition. Throngs of people paraded into and out of its brass, revolving doors - the inscription over them identified the place to be a bank.

He stood on the foot of its spacious front steps in a kind of haze - seeing it there so suddenly, abruptly, triggered a flood of forgotten memories.

_He and his mother were walking down the very same steps - it was morning and slants of orange sunlight diffracted through the array of unconquerable towers around them. She stopped him and they sat on the rocky edifices together. She gave him a candy bar and he opened it, breaking its soft, chocolate length into little, squares._

" _Can I have some?" a voice asked and he turned around._

_It was another boy, a human child with -_

"Black hair and hazel eyes," Kara said, grinning, as he stood alone on the sidewalk. He shrugged and snapped out of it. "No, that's impossible. That couldn't have been her, that couldn't have happened," he concluded, reasoning that it must have been only an illusion, brought on by wishful thinking and hopeless romanticism. His mother had died in an accident after he was born, or so he was told and Marsala and his father would never lie to him, or so he believed.

It was a half hour of unnerving adventure on trains, on busses and on foot. He treaded around places of the city that he had never been in before. He was not completely afraid, not entirely confident. He found by experience that he had a great sense of direction. The deeper he went the more daring he became and he got to a point where he no longer stopped to look up or hesitate to go on. The freedom, the urge to roam through the wilderness, it was in his blood, in his nature and it was coming out then and there as though it did not matter how long it had been buried or suppressed by the mores of his adult superiors.

Almost exhausted, young Kara finally reached the automatic sliding doors of the small hospital. A massive storm cloud over the tops of overhead-highways - swift winds galed across the streets - it had already begun to drizzle and the light wetness added an extra dimension to the lion's unkept appearance. The small lobby the entrance emptied into was lit by the soft glow of ceiling lamps. He was drawn to the back where he found a reception desk - yet he saw no one, no one anywhere.

He stopped to study the nameplate on the tabletop. "Doctor Z -"

"Why, hello," a feline voice prompted.

He put the nameplate back, running a hand across his face, through his mane nervously until he recognized the source of the intrusion - the cheetah doctor he had seen there before.

"Hi," he said.

She eyed him suspiciously until she, too, was able to recognize him. "Hey, you're that Liono Caesar found the other day."

"Yes, that's me." He grinned, not really wanting to. "Is he around?"

She pressed the pen she was holding up to her lip, then - realizing that she was holding it - she slid it into the top of her clipboard where it was meant to go anyway. "Not today. He's in the lower levels today."

"The lower levels?"

"Yup, where the, er, throwbacks live," she acted as if embarrassed by the word, not so much because of the word but because of who she was saying it to. "He's checking up on them. He'll be here tomorrow, if you'd like to -"

He sighed silently. "How does one get down there?"

The cheetah was somewhat shocked by the question, mostly because no one had ever asked her that. "Not too sure myself, I've never been to the underworld. You could try looking though the power stations nearby, I believe that's where Caesar goes to, they should connect to the surface."

Kara nodded and she excused herself. She had things to file, she said and, with a flash of fading, blue, yellow, he found himself alone, staggering to the exit. He wanted to shrink into the corner and cry. He felt lost and alone, thinking for a moment that his fantasy world had come tumbling down to a bleak reality.

Outside he sniffed the cold, metallic air - thunder crashed above and the snaking, twisting flashes of lightning caught his attention. Watching the macarbe spectacle from the safety of a concrete overhang, he tried to reason a plan. He had come along way and he did not want to quite, not when he had come so close.

Still, even if he could get to the power stations - wherever they were - there was no guarantee that he would ever be able to find Caesar in that infernal underworld. He had glimpsed only a portion of it earlier but even that little bit was enough to tell him what odds he was up against.

He stepped out of the safety of the dry shade and let the rainwater - warm and rich with ashy particles - intermingle with the strands of his red mane. Resolved despite it all, if there was a way down there, then he was going to find it. Even if he could not reach the 'silly' human, he smiled, he was determined at the least to learn more about that oft-ignored and misunderstood part of Metropolis - its subterranean, mechanic heart.


	11. Chapter 11

In the lower parts of the city stood an old, wooden house, large and weather-beaten, that, amidst the permanent shades of luxury high-rises, was completely ignored by its neighbors. Indeed, as the surrounding merchants busied themselves with the day-to-day activities of their lives, no one, no one at all, noticed the arrival of a small vehicle, its windows tinted completely black. The car stopped so close to the side entrance that, even if someone had stopped to look, it would have been impossible to describe the single, solitary figure that had emerged out from the vehicle into the constricting, plaster passageway.

The low ceiling too close to the top of his mane to be comfortable but he had traversed that same walkway many times before to be bothered by it now. Memory and just a tad spark of instinct led him through the hall - at the end he was greeted by a sturdy, panel door. Its bell did not work but even that was not a surprise. He had to knock in code. Three fast knocks, three slow knocks, three fast knocks again.

He stopped and stepped back. For breathless moments the world was an eerie silence, punctuated by the mechanistic tickings of unfathomable inventions. And then footsteps - a dull and heavy gait - that came to the door from behind it, closer and closer, faster and faster. The patter ended and the turning of locks began - the thick, oak barrier creaked open.

An image formed itself out of the slant of light that poured into the passageway.

"Dr. Algernon," a gruff voice spoke.

Recognizing the visitor at once, the mysterious man of the house pulled the door back all the way and let him in. "Lord Phaeton," he said in answer, bowing his head in a display of reverence.

The Lord of the Thundercats embraced the half-man, half-tiger - he and the doctor rubbed the sides of their faces together.

"I should have called, but I could not wait," the lion said, drawing back.

The half-breed's face remained unchanged - a Beethoven-esque countenance of untamed character. He had once been a nobleman, but when his homo sapien nature had at last begun to show he had been quickly and unapologetically banished from decent society by the snobbish blue bloods. "You came at a most fortunate time," he said, in ultra formalism. "I was just about to call you, in fact." He shut the door in a swift move to the side and, with his free hand, pointed his guest to the spiral staircase in the back of the foyer.

A small, square window at the top edge of the wall was the only source of ambient light, weak though it was.

As the two headed up the helical steps, the outcast began to speak: "I have made several, important discoveries very recently." In the upper level he showed the lion into a macarbe scene, painted by stocked shelves outlying a morgue of ancient technology, mangled by time, mounts and piles of Jagga-only-knew-what that were covered by thick, sooty canvass sheets. Spider webs, quivering spider webs. A large arachnid spun its web down from the ceiling while the doctor continued his lecture - he clasped it with his thumb and forefinger and popped it to a red, gooey death. "It began ten years ago when a cemetery was unearthed by," he paused to choose his word carefully, "undesirables while they mined for coal. It was no ordinary burial grounds." He pulled back a tarp then turned on a small bulb that hung nakedly above.

"What are these things?" Phaeton asked in shock as he looked upon the entangled mass. He had stepped back into the surrounding darkness.

"Berbils."

"Berbils?" The lion thought back to his schooldays - it had been that long since he had heard that word. "They all -"

"Died out, that's right. Their extinction happened long before all this," he waved his finger about, pointing upward. "The Wollos, too, did not survive. Apparently, the electromagnetic radiation of our machines - even back then - was too strong and overwhelmed their delicate biology." He paused and rubbed the fur around his neck. "Strange that the humans were spared that fate - as if they had been conditioned to it." His mind, too, stopped for a moment of contemplation, perplexed by how the pre-civilized Amazonians had gained immunity to the effects of the -

"But that was ten years ago?" Phaeton, like all cats, had a profound sense of curiosity.

"Yes, yes," Algernon returned to reality. "I used that time to study their bodies but I was making little progress, until just a few months ago, that is." He grabbed from the mass of corpses what appeared to be an arm and brought to the brighter shadows where the lion could better examine it. "Robotic. A bizarre mixture of the organic and the technical, just like the old legends said."

"I don't believe it," he grinned, "that you would listen to ancient folklore. Before I'll know it you'll be saying snarfs were real, too."

"But they were, my liege, they just returned to their home planet!"

The enshadowed pair exchanged a quick laugh.

"No, I'm serious," he pulled back the flap of withered, soil-encrusted hide that covered the elbow joint of the severed appendage. Wires and electric cords dangled from the wound. "The evidence of our own senses cannot be denied. They are machines, that much I knew from the moment I first studied them. How they lived is a question that took a decade to answer - and now I have it." He let the arm drop over the knotted mass of crushed, distorted Berbil remains. "Who ever built them was a genius - but short-sided and fundamentally flawed. Thus it was up to me to perfect what had been left raw and incomplete. Come." He patted the lion of the shoulder, directing him toward yet another door. He turned off the hot, glowing light bulb with a pull of its metal chain.

The new chamber was a laboratory so large that it took over the vast majority of the old house's volume. Long, thin windows, perched high on the walls, bathed the room in fresh sunlight and gave the area an air of imposing invincibility. Phaeton was startled by the flashing of arching sparks but Algernon was unmoved, already used to the electric coils on the floor, upright and next to a raised platform.

"Do not be afraid of the future, my lord - I give you my greatest creation!" He raised his hands over his head - his mane of red and black, balding in spots where his human scalp had begun to show - his hands curled erratically, his long fingers bent arthritically. He pulled on a cable that hung down from the ceiling and at once the electrical devices in the chamber came to life.

The floor vibrated to an unseen generator's hum. The conical coils of bare wire swayed and, though bolted in place, they seemed drawn to each other, bending toward each other, coming closer and closer with every pulsating throb. A stream of blue plasma snaked through the air to the raised platform - only then was it evident that something rested atop that elevated level.

The lion covered his eyes in horror and looked away as if the whole, wide world had come to an end.

The thing that was only visible for brief flashes began to move. Slowly, sluggishly. Up from its crouched position, it unfolded its legs, pressed its metallic fists on the plate upon which it rested and pulled itself up. A head arched back revealing a torso and then the cackling of the machines stopped, plunging the laboratory into a state of oppressing silence.

"For Jagga's sake, what is that?"

"A robotic man-machine, sire, perfect and unerring," the tiger spoke, wild-eyed.

Phaeton stepped closer, despite his reservations. The creation - what ever it was - was about as tall as the average man. The face was skeletal but retained the normal features: two eyes, an orifice for a nose, a cheek-less jaw with exposed 'teeth.' The chest was a network of wires and gears and boxed components that housed specialized mechanisms. The arms and legs and their extreme appendages had an unerringly realistic anatomic form.

Its fingers flexed in unison to its master's - then quickly assumed Algernon's pose as well.

"See, do you see? Second after second, its thoughts, its movements become more secure, more lifelike. Give me a day and I'll give you a robot that NO ONE can mistake for a machine."

The Lord of the Thundercats looked into the machine's eyes - its glowing red eyes.

The doctor clasped the lion's shoulders. "Did I not say you were fortunate to have come today? Think about it - what would we need living workers for?"

A flash came to Phaeton's eyes, it was the spark of divine inspiration and as the half-breed's words sunk in, a feral grin came to his face.


	12. Chapter 12

And then the downpour ceased with neither gradual abatement nor slow reduction. Up, above the clouds retreated and evaporated - the dark façades of the storm front waned and vanished into the thin air. The sun emerged through the sliverous gasps between buildings, casting long, dreary shadows across the varied structures of the lower levels of the city.

A collected pool trickled from the edge of the overhang to the concrete street - Kara stepped out from under that open-form shelter.

Relieved by the fortunate turn of events, he hit the pavement, carefully avoiding the edge of the sidewalk. He was in no mood to be drenched by the vehicles that passed through the roadway that sprayed the cement with filthy runoff. Yet, as careful as he was, he still managed to step on a pool - a shallow sheet of water that made more of a sound than a mess.

He stopped and looked down - the surface quivered violently but it calmed quickly and he caught a glimpse of himself, distorted, as it were, by the steep angle of view. He was not able to study his features for long for the momentary tranquility was interrupted by a pair of feet that treaded over the pool and splattered its water. He turned his eyes up and saw to his shock, a tall, well-built figure from the back, leaving the area around the hospital, heading to a nearby alley.

The stranger was Thunderian, scantily clad in a manner that had rapidly become familiar to him. Although he had not seen the cat's face, by the massive musculature alone he could tell who and what he was. A bandage around his arm and a slight limp only reinforced his intuition.

Keeping himself at a safe distance, he followed the throwback through wandering, meandering jet-black passages. To his left were the blunt, flat edifices of brick houses, grimy and dingy - the rain had done little to alleviate centuries of uncleanliness. To his right was a narrow strip of walkway littered with broken boxes and bags of garbage that the sanitation workers had not yet collected.

The sounds of the laborer's footsteps were loud and heavy and - he hoped - masked the patter of his own gait, nevertheless, to shake his comfort, a series of tense moments followed one after the other in random succession. The figure would stop and turn around but Kara, so in tune with his motions, could spot the move. Quietly - or as quietly as possible - he hid behind the trash and waited for the stranger to continue on his way.

The lion thought he was getting away with it - until the end.

That last time it happened he was not in the alley - rather, he was in an open area that appeared to be a run-down playground, long abandoned. Weeds and coarse plants overgrew the rusted, mangled equipment. Without warning the cat stopped under the green leaves of a twisted, gnarled tree. An upsurge in the air caused its branches to sway and the chirping of its rustling leaves deafened the haste of his ducking and diving behind a mound of yellow sand.

But he had not been careful and kicked piles of empty beer cans, scattered them across the rocky turf. He thought the world had come to an end and as he crouched in the safety of the makeshift cover he wondered and feared what would happen and how he could deal with it. Not a sound came from the throwback - not even the whisper of breath echoed in the air - and in time he came to believe that the figure was not there, not there anymore. He convinced himself that the imperfect Thunderian had just simply continued his journey.

Unable to take the dread of it, Kara took a deep breath and poked his head out - "No!" he shouted and darted in. The stranger was still there, still under the shade of the tree, the features of his face were clear despite the darkness. And he was looking, spying on the lion.

A surge of adrenaline coursed through his veins - he felt absolute terror beyond bearing.

The grown-up cat knelt over the rotund, metal cap of a manhole and, with his bare hands, tore it free from the soldered threads that kept it in place. The violent exertion was made with but barely a few grunts. The lion had gotten up to his feet in time to see the throwback ease his way down the tube.

Kara waited for about a minute before he advanced. He looked about the cluttered playground - the courtyard was surrounded by the rear of gray and white brick buildings. An unexpected moment caused his gaze to shift from the exposed manhole to a blackened window of an ancient structure. It was a curtain that had been drawn back and let go to sway in a bizarre rhythm.

The youngster was taken aback and, as if to compound his sense of foreboding, words that Marsala had spoken to him earlier came back - no, it was not his world. It was not meant for him. He shrugged it off and knelt before the portal in the concrete that had been left unblocked. He tried to look into the darkness, but all he saw, all he understood, was but a reflection of the gravity of the situation. He realized that he was miles from home, a stranger in unfamiliar elements - but to take the next step, the ultimate, logical extension, to go from the lofty heights where he was worshiped as a god, to the lowly depths where his life was insignificant, expendable to the business of running and keeping the machines required a moment of pause.

He could turn back, he could always turn back but the die was cast. He had gone too far already to turn back. He reached into the manhole and searched the inner wall for the rungs of its ladder.

Locating the protruding, iron bars, he descended. Reaching new depths, eyes adjusting to the dim atmosphere, the circular opening above seemed so unreachable, so faraway that its wide mouth had shrunk to little more than pinpoint of light. His ears, too, had attained a new, more profound acuteness, but all he could sense was the distant drip of water - he was so lost in its steady beat that he was, to a point, almost in a hypnotic trance.

"Ahhh!" large, beefy hands grabbed his neck and thigh.

"Got you!" came a low, gruff voice, more of an animalistic growl than a voice. It was the throwback. "Why do you follow me?" he asked, pulling the lion from the ladder to him, spinning the youngster. "Who are you?" He dragged him into a side tunnel and, with the glow of red, emergency lights, examined the captive with his eyes, letting go of his hold around the mouth, grabbing onto the shoulders instead.

Kara winced in pain. "I'm not trying to hurt you," he said, meekly. "I just, ahhh," he squirmed. "I just wanted to come to the surface."

The figure laughed - not so much because of what he heard but what he saw. "You're only a cub!" He let the youth go as if to toy with him. "And why would you want to come here? It isn't your world."

Trying to find a way to explain it, the lion moped and paced. He caught a glimpse of the cat's bare feet - his toes were rounded, swollen, almost. He looked at his own digits - stubby, short things, more human than feline. "I need to see someone."

Again the imperfect Thunderian laughed: "And how do you know someone down here? To your kind we're not even numbers -"

"He's not one of you," he said defensively, backing up to the wall.

The grown-up cat's face met the cub's: "You aren't afraid? You really aren't afraid?"

"I have to reason to be," the youngster responded, firmly. He tried to reach out to touch the throwback's face but his arm gave way at the last moment.

The stranger stepped back and, after a silent pause, knelt before the lion-cub. "Go back, go home. I can't help you."

"I've come so far," he whimpered. "I want to know more about this underworld, I want to understand it."

The man shook his head. "Why? Had I the power I would leave this place and you, who can, want to come here?"

"This world and the people in it are important to someone I care for and I do, genuinely do want to know more." He put his hands on the throwback's exposed shoulders, inching his fingers toward his curly mane - the cat was a puma with tan fur, brown and white hair and the softest eyes.

"Who is this person?"

More than anything it was his facial deformity that caused his voice to have the deep, rough character it had.

Even before Kara was able to say the name, already his demeanor, his manner, his whole expression had changed dramatically. He was almost a different person, fidgeting his fingers and everything. The stranger - who was still nameless - actually smiled. "His name is Caesar."

The puma's eyes widened: "You know Caesar?"

"I know him some, but I'd like to know him better. I was told he was down here."

"Yes, yes, he is." He stood and wrapped an arm around the youngster's back. "He is such a - hmmm - I can take you to him, cub, but you'll have to wait a bit." He stopped, looked up and down the passage and whispered: "The meeting is at two, at the end of this shift."

"What kind of meeting is -"

"Shhh!" Again he whispered: "We don't talk about out in the open."

The lion nodded. "I can wait," he said, walking along the tunnel with the laborer.

"You'll do more than wait. If you want to blend in you'll have to do some work to get yourself dirtied. I see you've already begun." He ended his quip with a slight chuckle.

"Where do you work?" the lion-cub asked.

"At a relay station. I used to be with the dynamos but an accident put that to an end - so I switched places -" he smiled, "I didn't mean to scare you - but we have to be careful. We all love Caesar, some of us more than others, I guess," he paused. "I guess that makes us, special, huh? Maybe not so special."

"Do you have a name?" Kara asked.

"I call my self Pumalo," he answered, "but we don't really go by names down here." Again the youngster nodded. "And what's you name, cub?"

"Kara," he answered, without hesitation.


	13. Chapter 13

The doctor led the autonomous machine from the sparking platform to a solitary, chair-like device. An assortment of cables and samophlanges arched up and down from the back and sides of the electric seat and connected to the robot's ports. Their uses were magical, a blend of technology and sorcery that had been lost to the ages, their purposes unknown for Algernon worked in silence while Phaeton watched. The man-tiger checked through the snakelike tentacles that throbbed and pulsated in his hands as if alive.

The robot, meanwhile, looked on at the scientist - the red glow of its eyes shrinking and expanding as it focused its vision. And that, that effect, small and insignificant, frightened the Lord of the Thundercat beyond bearing. It dawned on him that the cyborg was studying its creator, thinking, judging - reasoning?

"Could it think?" the lion wondered to himself. "Did it matter?"

The doctor returned to the levers at the center of the laboratory. He pulled the closest one to the sounds of unoiled gears turning their axles, crunching their teeth. A ring dropped from the ceiling, guided along its way by a series of wires at its rim. The area of the circle shined in the weak light and even had spotty reflections that betrayed the presence of a clear plastic. The unusual material separated from the hoop and spread around the robot - its eyes attentively followed the course of action - and covered completely the creature's topographical details.

"That," he said, rubbing his hands together maniacally, "is for later." He turned to the lion and put a hand on his back - it was a nonverbal cue that signaled that it was time to leave.

Phaeton was not about to resist that idea. He was led out of the same door he had entered in and walked through areas of the old house that he was not too familiar with. Apparently, Algernon had remodeled his home in preparation for the robot - or robots.

Past a set of swinging doors he found himself in a storehouse of unspeakable ghastliness, accentuated and magnified by the abject darkness. He treaded across a thin trail of exposed, hardwood floor. To his left and right he was surrounded by the shadows of deranged figures and vague forms. Limbs and open chests were sprawled on long tables and at the faraway distance were glowing dots of red, tiny, pinpricks of light that followed him as he tried to catch-up to his host.

"What are those things? More of those robotic machines?"

The half-human, half-tiger stopped: "I have a couple almost finished - the rest that you see here are the failures."

The two passed under the intense light of the chamber's single, naked bulb that was suspended over a set of doors.

The doctor helped the lion out of the room and as he passed through the unblocked frame he sighed in relief that he had left that chamber of horrors intact. He did not give the room a second look. Oddly, he felt that its claustrophobic atmosphere was so totally blackened, so absolutely obscured that the oblivion seemed to form walls where there was on air.

Past a set of stairs he stepped into more familiar, less threatening territory. The hybrid-tiger's office, a room almost as large as his own stately quarters - a medium-high ceiling, wooden-tile floor, walls replete with books both out-of-print and modern, well-known and obscure. An open window cast light upon a cluttered desk.

Algernon saw that his guest lingered in the recess of the room, hesitant to come closer, so, as was the custom, he stifled the curtains shut, isolating the study from the world outside.

"As always, when my experts fail I come to you." He reached into his side pocked and pulled out scraps of linen and cloth, setting them on the desk.

The doctor examined the items. He turned on a lamp and produced magnifying glasses from a drawer. For minutes he inspected the strips of cloth, hemming and hawing. He did not find anything out of the ordinary, anything unusual about the materials that could have told him who or what had produced them. On a hunch he put down the confiscated evidence and turned his attention to a section of the library. He looked up a series of books and skimmed through their pages.

The lion waited patiently for an answer - the answer.

The tiger lay a volume open on the tabletop for the lord to see. It was a centuries' old edition of a government publication. It even had the double insignia of the Thundercat and Amazonian symbols embossed on the front cover.

Phaeton's face indicated confusion, Algernon told him to read on. The tome was open to a specific page, a reference to an event that had occurred one hundred thousand years before. It was a case study of a minor throwback revolt, one that had been quenched swiftly by the Imperial Amazonian guard. Plans were found among the leaders - the lion turned the page - to his shock and horror he saw he saw the photographs of treasonous documents. Linens upon which were inscribed the very same marks and designs that the three, executed workers had had on them.

"The cloths you have here," the doctor said, picking up the pristine sheets, "have been surfacing, intermittently, every one hundred-thousand years or so for as long as we've been keeping records on the matter. Remarkable how it's always been the same, exact pattern. The lines, the shapes appear to be a map but nothing known now or then match the proportions. They're also quite expertly manufactured; they show a kind of detail an engineer might use. Clearly the throwbacks are incapable of stuff like this - it makes you wonder if there's not something else, something more in the depths with them."

"Every one hundred-thousand years? Why? What's the significance?"

"Off the top of my head, well," he reclined on his chair, "that's how long it takes Third Earth and this solar system to revolve around the galaxy. The configurations of the outermost objects in the night sky return to their original positions after about that much time has passed. Still, I'm not sure that's not significant at all."

"Even when you think you're wrong, you could be right, old friend. It's the position of stars and galaxies that give the sword its power. Maybe, after all those years pass, a constellation or an arrangement re-forms and to conveys power to someone or something that -"

"Could be something to consider - what, who could it be? Still, I suspect that whatever is behind it all, it probably acts every hundred-thousand years to ensure that the people forget -"

"What on Third Earth could possibly exist for that long? That it could show up time and time -"

A slight pause momentarily echoed within the chamber.

"What about these other ones? The ones on scraps?"

Algernon sighed: "Simple enough, I recognized them form the start. I remembered it from my days investigating the subterranean world. It's a map to Cat's Lair. The ruins date back to a time before Metropolis had begun," he tapped a finger on the shredded, burnt cloths that had been found on the throwbacks killed in the dynamo accident.

"Hmmm, I wonder what the workers would want to do with that."

"Don't know." The doctor returned the books to their places on the shelves.

"Were there weapon at the site?"

"No, we found none - the older Thundercats did not have out sensibilities, my lord."

"If one knows then more must know, too - it cannot be allowed." He stood and rubbed his eyes. "What goes on down there? What do they do there in the dark?"

"Why don't we go and see?"

Phaeton looked up at the doctor: "You know how to get there?"

"I worked in the caverns for so long that I memorized many routes and passages." He reached into his desk and pulled out a set of night-vision goggles, dusty and encrusted with soil. "These, I found, were better than flashlights."

The lion took a pair and studied them in his hands.

"Come, sire, there's only one way to find out what's been going on. Fortunately for us, there's an old sewage tunnel under this house that'll take us close to the area."

The lord nodded and spun around to look at the stairwell. The prospect of having to go through the doctor's laboratories again did not appeal to him and he wondered if it would have been better to return to his office and worry about the goings-on deep underground then to go to see the situation for himself. But he sighed and rubbed his face - he followed the tiger half-breed, ready to do what had to be done.


	14. Chapter 14

Pumalo had an incredibly accurate sense of direction, or so Kara thought. But he was in another world, alien and unfamiliar to him, so he was oblivious to the gradations of the symphony of noise that the larger cat intimately knew. Every machine had its own, particular set of sounds. Dynamos had the elemental timber of the burning, crackling of flames that consumed the fuel. Pumps swooshed, vents hummed - relays and generators had intermittent bells and sirens. And since the devices were segregated within every sector, it was actually very simple for the puma to tell where he was and where he was going.

The tunnels were not entirely dark. At every hundred feet or at the intersection with cross-passages were small squares of permanent red light. The mechanism that produced the illumination was driven by the difference in temperature between the hot, stale air and the cold pipes of running water that ran behind the walls. The glow was not weak and, as their senses adjusted to the conditions, it was almost too bright an illumination for them.

Numbers were stenciled next to the panel - the throwback did not stop to glance at the digits, rather, he touched the bass-relief of the markings as he passed. The miniature signs seemed to indicate what path to take.

The young lion paid careful attention and took detailed mental notes of everything - or almost everything - that the big cat did. He managed to keep track of those unusual numbers that the dim aura barely revealed. He was also mindful to make as little noise as possible. The bottom of the tunnel was flooded with an inch of runoff from the past storm and both Thunderians did not want their feet to splash the water for the sound of it would have been too distracting.

The air was hot and humid and as they descended deeper and deeper into the underworld the atmosphere around them became more and more unbearable. A mist or slight fog clung to the walls of the passage - it had a very distinctive and foul odor. It was not one thing specifically that reeked of rot; it was a ghastly blend of things too unpleasant to think upon. Unused to that plethora of malodor, time and time again Kara resisted the urge to wretch. He wanted to be strong, not out of a need to impress Pumalo but because he was a Thundercat.

To whom much was given, much was expected and he was determined to live up to the highest standards of the code of Thundera, come what may.

At a certain point, far too entrenched in that subterranean to reckon by normal, topside terms, the two found themselves at an intersection unlike all that others that had come before. It was silent and pitch-black; the air was cool and vented from what must have been an immensely tall ceiling. But it was the silence, the quietude that struck them as highly unusual and filled their mannerisms with a newfound sense of urgency.

"I see a red glow ahead," the puma whispered to the lion-cub.

He walked closely next to the throwback and used the radiating heat of his body to guide him. For the most part he stayed in step but miscalculated one - "Ahhh!" he screamed as he plummeted through a hole he had had no clue was there, a mere inches from his feet.

"Kara!" the puma threw himself to the ground and reached into the gaping break. "Kara!"

Out of breath and yet relieved that he was still alive he responded: "I'm here - I'm - I grabbed onto - something -"

"Can you see my hand?"

The youngster looked up - he saw the rotating blades of a fan high above and gulped nervously at the realization that there was another turning frame just under him. He saw, too, another moving blob in the shadow. "I can see it, let me try to reach -" he tried to use his feet to help prop himself closer to the emerging form.

"Let me get lower, wait, wait." He angled his right, upper body over the edge of the chasm, the rising currents fretting his mane. He swung his fist gently until it brushed against the cub's flesh - he wrapped his fingers around what he had coughed.

"My arm -"

"Grab onto me as hard as you can." He felt the youth's hands clasp around his elbow and his face press on his biceps. Almost with no effort he lifted the lion from the hole to the solid ground of the passage.

As soon as he realized that they were both safe, he stopped under the glow of a red, numbered light panel and hugged the youngster. He had seen many of his kind succumb to worser fates, many enough to make him indifferent to death. But the lion-cub had awoken in him a sort of humanity he thought he had lost long ago - and it not just Kara, Caesar, too, had a touch and attention that -

"Why did you do that?" he asked. He craved closeness, yes, but though he found the puma utterly masculine in appeal, he was not attracted to him that way.

"I almost lost you there, cub," he answered, his gruff voice scarcely hiding a deeper sentiment.

"I owe you my life, thank you." That time he hugged the throwback, finding in his arms something he had never known from his father.

"Stop that now, cub, I'm not worth it, I know it." He sighed. "We're almost there." He pointed to the end of the tunnel where a faint, gray smoke and full, white light poured in.

Kara was lucky in a way, his ordeal had smeared him and his clothes with so much filth that he could blend easily into that world with little effort. Indeed, had it not been for his face and smallish figure, he would have been indistinguishable from the natives - that said, it was not as if he was a small, frail creature by any means, but that compared to Pumalo he had the build and stature of an insect. He was also fortunate in that the individual relay stations were themselves isolated in separate alcoves.

"Keep your head down," the puma advised. "Act like you're back is sore - they'll not suspect you as much if the lights are dim."

The two filed past open alcoves where workers toiled over their own parts of the large machine. One cubbyhole was empty and dark - they entered it. The lights turned on automatically, the apparatus whizzed in a series of ringing bells.

"Just sit back and watch," he said, as he grabbed a pair of levers in his hands. "This shift ends in about three hours." He grinned at the youngster as he began his work.

The relay station was considered an 'upscale' job in the hierarchy that the underworld society had created. Pumalo was to enjoy the privilege of working there until the tiger, whose duty it was at the time of that shift, fully recovered from his burns in the hospital. The reason that mundane drudgery was considered so cushy was that it had the remotest chance of death-on-the-job.

The apparatus was necessary because, inevitably, a power station somewhere would overheat or have to go off line for a while. The demand for electricity also changed from place to place and time to time. So it was the job of the relay operator to reroute the flow of electricity from where it was not needed, to where it was necessary.

The machine itself had the appearance of an overgrown clock face, five feet in diameter. It had a ring of lights and numbers around its outer perimeter and two arms that were connected to the center. The arms were of equal length with points at their tips and could only rotate about a semicircle, each arm for each half of the 'disk.' When a light flashed and a buzzer sounded the corresponding arm had to be moved so that its arrow tip pointed to it. The pace tended to be slow but every so often the tempo increased substantially.

All the while Kara leaned back on the wall and watched attentively, almost adoringly. He wondered for a moment what his father did at his job, when ever he had gone up to see him - the only times he had any interaction with the old lion - he would be sitting at his desk. It was just a thought, no more, no less and it passed almost as suddenly as it had occurred to him.

The puma tired - he wiped away the sweat off of his brow with the back of his arm, careful not to disturb the site of his bandages.

"Let me do that," the lion-cub volunteered, approaching the relay station.

The deformed puma let the youth take the spinning arms and watched where he stood as the youngster worked. He was amused at how quickly he had gotten the feel for it and was equally impressed by his stamina.

"I can turn you into one of us yet,' he added a wry laugh as he grasped the teenager's shoulder.

"How long have you been down here?" the would-be Thundercat asked.

"All my life," Pumalo sat himself at the base of the far wall, away from the alcove's entrance. "I'm not sure exactly how long it's been. I stopped counting my number of shifts after I reached a thousand. It just wasn't worth it."

Sparks arced in the main chamber - it cast bright, green shadows in the small room the two were in.

"Don't worry about that - just lightning. We get it all the time."

Kara had paused for a moment - he had felt the tingle of a current course through his fingertips - but reassured, he resumed undaunted.

The humid air soon got so hot that the lion felt sure he was going to collapse. He was not getting enough oxygen and so he slumped forward, supported by the rotating arms. He had slowed down drastically, too. The puma took the helm of the device and let the lion-cub slunk back to the corner to recover from the strenuous activity, the deceptively laborious job that he had neither the training nor the built-up resolve to perform.

"That's all right, don't worry yourself about it - you weren't made to live here."

He nodded to Pumalo, trying to regain his composure.


	15. Chapter 15

Kara felt utterly and completely useless as he cowered in the rocky façade of the corner of the relay station, watching in hiding as the last hours of the morning shift passed away in the slow, deliberate pace of time. His youthful vigor had been quenched, as it were, by the oppressing heat and stifling humidity - the smoke-filed, noisy passages of that bustling underworld added their own timbers to the harshness of the climatic condition. And above that external, physical discomfort, he was attacked by an internal, throbbing pain that had sprung up, around his nose.

Breathing was exhausting, talking was painful and even something as simple as looking at Pumalo while he worked the machine aggravated his bleak and dreary disposition - and that, more than anything, bothered him because he wanted to be helpful but it was as though an invisible hand, cold and omnipotent, was holding him back, keeping him at bay.

Still, he was able to make the most of his predicament. He noted the exact position of Pumalo's post with respect to the others. He memorized the shape and contour of the general area. He poked his head out of the alcove into the corridor, discretely mapping, forming in his mind a rough outline of the path he had taken from where he had entered the scene to where he was at that very moment.

He turned his attention, his keen eyes and sharp mind to the large puma. He studied the burly feline's body, his movements, responses and reaction. The gripping distortion of his hands, the tensing of his flexed arms. His chest heaved as he panted the stale air, his legs bucked as he tried to support his massive musculature.

The puma was beautiful, he thought to himself, rapt in the figure's raw and dripping masculinity.

Kara crawled from the corner to Pumalo's side. He patted the throwback's ribs, calling his attention - the grown-up cat, startled free from his repetitious trance, crouched down to be closer to the cub's level. Seeing how badly his friend was sweating, he took off his shirt and used the gray rags to dry the puma's face. Continuing to work without protest, he indicated to the lion with moans and slight grunts that his shoulders and back needed a bit of massaging.

"I'm better now," he whispered. "Let me have another turn at it."

Pumalo was about to speak but at that instant the rotating arms of the relay froze and the lights on its edge shut off - the youngster was shocked and inched from the machine to the cover of the corner, afraid that his presence had been detected. "The shift's ended," the malformed Thunderian said, comforting the lion. "It means we can go now."

A whistle rung and as its din echoed and vibrated through the tunnels, thick, ashy smog engulfed the hives. Itchy eyes watery, his vision was obscured - he could feel but not see the puma's injured arm drape across his naked back. Flesh on flesh touching, the Thundercat sensed sore muscles twitching, hot hide pulsating and, held in that manner, he was led from the relay station, through the murky haze, to the center of the hall where leery, exhausted workers had already come together.

"Just stick with me," Pumalo said. While with one arm he had the cub in a tight embrace, with the other he dried his sweat with the crumpled shirt that the youth had been wearing. "We're not really going to follow these guys," he leaned into the lion's ears, "but we're going to have to make it look that way."

Following the gentle nudging and prodding of the large cat's silent directions, he was led blindly through passages so dark, so indistinct with shadow that, had he tried, he could not have been able to tell where he was, where he was going. Kara held his head down, kept his eyes fixed on the ground. He could see the back of legs and his and the puma's feet.

He was not aware of the sweeping change until enough time had passed for his weakened senses to adjust. Only too late he realized that he was no longer on a line, shuffling off slowly to the distance, pressing, body to body, with the workers in that inhospitable heat. Unnerved, his head arched up and he looked around him but it was the blackness of deep, formless shadows that greeted him.

Kara was in a tunnel, thin and cramped, its rough walls, neither metal nor concrete, was made of dirt and stone that crumbled in his fingers. No one was in front of him, no one was at his side and, to his horror, Pumalo's intimate hold had parted. He wanted to scream but at the last moment he heard that voice again, gruff and commanding.

"Don't be afraid, I'm still here," the large cat cupped the youth's shoulder, guarding him.

He was in a tight passage, walking in the lead with the throwback immediately him. He slowed his pace until the puma just slightly bumped his back. He grinned reassured that indeed he was not alone.

"We'll be there shortly, cub, don't worry about it."

The puma reached up and quickly pulled down from his neck the dry shirt he had lain across his back and, teasingly, wrapped it around the lion's shoulders.

"Who is that?" a new, unfamiliar voice asked.

Kara wanted to turn back to see who it was but dared not make too much of a scene.

"He's new," Pumalo answered. "But he's all right, though."

The tunnel was sloped but early on the effect was unnoticeable. It was not until the marched had dragged on and on that the downward inclination was made quite pronounced. He found that it was hard to walk at a deliberate pace but, with his friend holding and direction him, he was able to stay stead and on track.

"Just keep your head low," he whispered. "Sit behind me when we get there. I'll get a spot in the back where it'll be safe."

The vented air in the clustered path was cool and circulated very strongly. His mane was ruffled and his exposed fur was singed with the dust and fallen soil that the wind had whipped up in its wake. He coughed and rubbed his eyes, his face - oddly, his features were tender and beyond that they did not even feel like themselves. He was struck by wild, bizarre sensations and, exploring the details of his head, the strangeness intensified. His brow, his nose, his lips were at once both like himself and not himself, neither one, nor the other but a new and unknown amalgam, a bone-chilling mixture.

The slope of the floor flattened and with that sudden and dramatic change even the nature of the passage had been altered. No longer constricting and claustrophobic, the tunnel had grown, amplifying in height and breath, to the proportions of a stadium-sized cavern. Lights, dim and smoky blue, evolved from the distance along with a series of moving shadows. Sounds, fierce but tempered, bellowed from a makeshift stage.

Kara and Pumalo separated from the small line of throwbacks that had been behind them to the rear of the meeting chamber. Wall to wall the area was full of workers, clad in sooty, ripped clothes, others outright naked, sitting on the dirt of the earthen floor, listening to the group of three speakers assembled before them. The faces of the deformed Thunderians were protected by shadows - he, too, was covered by darkness and he found that in the recesses of the chamber, hovering over the puma's back, peeking through his brownish mane, that he was safe and anonymous.

The cavern was not natural; it had been dug out of incomplete excavation site. Jetting out of the extremes were a pair of collapsed rows of concrete, it had rectangular, metal parts and features that though mangled and distorted by time, still retained enough of its original character to suggest to the lion-cub - as it had to the rest present - that the ruins were of elbowed arms complete with clawed toes, the paws open, the hollow 'palms' up. Connected to the architectural limbs was what was left of an equally artificial, sculpted torso. Gnarled, iron beams and frayed, uneroded wires poked out of obscure gashes.

The three speakers were up close to the audience - the felines who had gathered all round the ruins - and talked around a miraculously intact head.

A cathead - with rounded ears and ancient features - of blue stonework and red eyes.

It was Cat's Lair, the very Cat's Lair of ancient myth and as the knowledge of it dawned on Kara, he sat aback, oblivious to what the three at the center were saying, until he recognized one of them to be his black-haired, hazel-eyed god.

"- And they say," said a throwback - half tiger, half lion, "that we are not men, that we are not worthy, unfit to live among them. They say those things and more and they act as if they were the masters of this world. I ask you, what is Metropolis without these?" he raised his hands, shaking his extended fingers before his face. "Isn't it this that powers this city? This that feed the machines? We slave and work our lives away in bitter, tearless toil while they," with one finger he pointed up - to the arched ceiling, propped by makeshift, rotted beams of wood, "waste their lives enjoying the benefits of our labor for free, without care or obligation, thinking, in the heights of their arrogance, that all of this is but granted, given, as if manna from the gods. Let their bodies rot to meager weaklings - at the end just who is the slave and who is the master? I tell you this: the people of Metropolis are the only ones in this picture that consume with out producing. What do those Thundercats and Amazonians do? Do they dig the coal, do they scavenge for oil? Are they strong enough to lift the heaviest axle? Are they agile enough to work for ten hours without rest? Fast to keep pace with the relays, quick to know their way around a sputtering dynamo? Yet they are our lords and master? They set us to work and give us the bare minimum that we need to survive. They call us inferior - then let them do the work for us, if they are so much better. They say we are expendable - then let them come down here and kill us all, if we're not needed. No, they say a lot of things but they don't do them, they wouldn't dare. They need us, far, far more than we need them. I ask you again, who is the slave and who is the master? It is about time that we awake and realize our true importance in this society."

The black and gray tiger waved his hand and turned to face his two, fellow speakers, indicating to them and to all that his speech had ended. The assembled masses applauded, even Kara and Pumalo, who had not listened to the whole oration but who wanted to draw no attention to themselves. The lion-cub sat next to the massive, crossed legs of the grown-up cat, his gaze transfixed, his attention unwavering.

Caesar stepped into the center stage of ruins and, without clearing his throat, he began to talk to the weary, tired assembly. "A long time ago, before there was anything called Metropolis, before the Thundercats had arrived on Third Earth, a time so remote, so distant that even the Amazonians did not exist, this planet was green with forests, blue with open skies. Rivers snaked across the land and lakes reflected upon their pristine surfaces the snowcapped peaks of ageless mountains. All of this was once like that and though the world is now replete with waste and excess, yet even in this rotting hell the seed of that primordial earth remains, ready to be unlocked and roam free once more. It exists - it must - there, where ancient memories fade and maps dissolve into borderless obscurity, there where the walls of this city stop and the tyranny of its masters cannot reach, that wilderness lives. My story takes place in a place like that, in times untamed."

Kara rubbed his forefingers around his temples - a slight hum had come to his head as he began to picture the scene, the story that the man was slowly, deliberately unfolding. Clans, different clans had come together on a flat, fertile plane. The people wanted to rectify the bonds that had once connected them with each other but that time and decay had torn asunder. Desperate, they decided to build a tower to reach the gods and ask them to show the way.

The people worked on the tower, year after year, decade after decade, until there came a time when they had forgotten what they were building it for. But by then the labor had become so ingrained, so all consuming that it had transformed from a means to an end, to an end in itself. The leaders assumed the guise of the deities and the work went on for the sake of work that served no purpose but to keep the commoners busy and backward. Higher and higher still the tower rose - and then one day the workers realized the intentions of their masters -

The lion reeled at the image that had come to him. At once a heavenly, ivory edifice, spiraled with flowered ivies, furled with touches of red marble, succame to a hollow shell, burning and smoking, crumbling and shaking. Onlookers run aghast, ground quaking, heavens tumulting.

"There must be an understanding," Caesar concluded, "but there is hope for the future -"

"We can wait," a voice called out from the audience, "but not forever."

A sprinkle of sand and brittle, decayed vegetation fell from the lofty heights of the vast chamber to its floor, amid the congregated rabble of workers, a drop of almost fifty feet. In the applause that followed the human's speech no one had noticed the subtle disturbance in the scene, no one had cared enough even to look up. And even if they had, they would not have seen much beyond the fog and haze that the darkness had made of the ceiling - rather, it was more a question of who was watching them.

"I have had enough," Phaeton winced and stepped back from the hole on the wooden-flanked flooring. He was in a tunnel that ran above the worker's arena, a segment of a network of passages that had been dug intending to mark the start of a new dig but that red-tape and a lack of funds had put to an end. "I know now what's been going on." The old lion crawled from the perilous, overlooking hole to the safety of the solid rock.

"They're just words, sire," the doctor said, helping him up to his feet. He had not remained at the edge of the hole for long as soon as he realized how far and deadly fall down could have been. Heights were a problem for the half-breed's weakened sense of balance. "Nothing can come of talk, it never has, it never will. I'm sure scenes like this have been playing out for centuries."

"Perhaps," the Lord of the Thundercats rubbed the soil off of his hands. "Perhaps."

_In a vaulted chamber of rock and stone, not too far from the ruins of Cat's Lair, a red-robed figure approached a calm, tranquil pool - a withered face reflected upon the waters, red eyes aglow -_

The lion looked back to the hole, his face contorted in a puzzled look. He thought he had heard a maniacal laughter - dry and harsh - he shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the momentary distraction. A thought had just then occurred to him - "But now, now we can do something about it." Plans and schemes, sinister in absolute nature, percolated and formed in his mind, emerging to the light of reason from fragmented ideas. "Make the robot look like him," he said, pointing back to the hole, "that human, Caesar. Marsala told me about him - he works with the throwbacks." He grabbed the doctor's arms and rambled on: "Let the robot rile the workers to revolt - to discredit him and them - I crush the rebellion and in so doing gather the support I need among the people to consider -"

"To consider the extermination of the workers -"

"Workers we replace with your man-machines."

"I want it done soon, as soon as possible."

"And what should we do to him? To the real Caesar?"

"Leave him to me," he answered, letting go and passing the tiger, human half-breed, "there are methods." He covered his eyes with the night-goggles. "I'll find my way through the tunnels," he said, vanishing, assuring himself of his good sense of direction. "Until next time, doctor."

Algernon nodded and again turned to face the square hole - the audience was up on its feet, shuffling out of the area. The speakers conversed among themselves and with others who had stayed behind for idle chatter. He folded the scraps of marked linens into his pocket, thinking silently -

In the darkness, Kara and Pumalo watched the workers stand and shuffle toward the surrounding tunnels, returning to the hives that consumed their lives. At the center of the cavern, where the hazy light was focused, Caesar talked with the two, throwback speakers, hugging them and stroking their arms. He gave them what appeared to be old, thin volumes, ancient books small enough to hide in the folds of their clothes. As the last of the audience left and as the feline orators followed them out, the pair in the back of the site finally stepped forward to meet him.

Caesar took notice of them as they emerged into the light. "How did you get down here?" he asked as he reached the lion. "How -"

"I was curious, so I - well, I," he grinned, looking at the puma, "it's a long story." He took hold of the man's elbows and brought his arms around him in a low embrace. "I missed you, silly human."

"You shouldn't have," he petted the lion's red mane. The strands entangled in his fingers but gently he pulled away and the rough knots came undone. "You shouldn't have come. What if someone had noticed you? What if your father -"

"Oh, don't worry about that." He snuggled his chin over the man's shoulder, letting his hands wander the back of his shirt, feel his rippling, heaving muscles through the fabric, enter his tightening loincloth through the waistband. "I'm all right. And you?"

"I've had a great day," he giggled. Breaking a bit back from Kara, he studied the Thunderian's exposed chest with his eyes, his nimble fingertips tantalizing the furry flesh. As he patted the lion's developing tone he felt him purr - his eyes shut, his body quivered in the attention. He rubbed the underside of his chin and in response he arched his head to the side. "I'm having an even better one now."

He took Caesar's hands in his own - "You spoke so beautifully." He kissed the human's palms, teasing him with his licking tongue. "I want you to pet me, pet me," he pled.

"Hehehe," he whispered a laugh and kissed the cat's cheek.

"I love you, Caesar." He licked the man's lips, stopping their movement.

"You're such a sweet, soft lion, Kara. Let me worship you." He patted the lion's back, gently squeezing the soft, silky flesh. He brought their bodies together and completed their union with a deep kiss. "I absolutely love you."

They paused for endless moments, feeling all the while that they were the only two people in the world.

"You can't stay down here," the human warned. "Can you get back to the surface?"

"I can bring him back," Pumalo said, gruffly. He put a hand on the lion-cub's shoulder and smiled. "I'll take good care of him."

"Be careful, you two," he kissed the lion again, one last time. "Come back to the hospital tomorrow afternoon, I'll be back then."

Kara nodded and, heart racing, eyes watering, he broke from the object of desire and with one last good-bye he followed the puma into the tunnels. Yet he kept looking back to the human, who had remained in the center of the arena, until that moment when the distance and the cramped, passage conditions did not allow it.

He stopped and hugged the large cat, almost in tears.

"What's the matter, cub? You'll see him again," he comforted the youth, patting his head and helping him put on his shirt.

"Will I see you again, Pumalo?"

In the darkness he grinned. "Hmmm, we are from different worlds, Kara, it wasn't meant -"

"So what about the world - you saved my life, I owe you everything."

"No problem there, cub, now come on, we have to go before it's too late for you."

He picked the lion up and, much to the youth's delight carried him on his arms.

Close to his face, he studied the Pumalo's features from the side. Noting its shape, its form, the character of the profile was familiar - he just could not tell why, exactly. He rubbed under the throwback's chin innocently, letting him purr loudly. It was the closeness that he craved and the grown-up cat was willing to give it - and that was more than he could say about the adults in his life who had denied it to him for as long as he could remember. Yes, he saw something in the puma, something he had never seen even in his father.

Caesar touched the side of the severed head of the ruins of Cat's Lair. He felt the burnt, charred surface of the porous stonework and, as the rough texture passed beneath his fingertips, he was drawn back - back in time, to the distant past. He sighed, wishing that he had been born then and not now in that age of mechanical nature, mechanical life. The human stared into the crystal rubies of the carved feline's captivating eyes, wondering to himself how things had gone wrong, so horribly wrong.

Saddened, he leaned supported against the figure. He was exhausted emotionally. He had wanted to spend more, much more time with Kara and regretted that he had to cut their meeting short but he could not escape his responsibilities. Meetings, discussions, concerns with the hospital, business with the throwback but tomorrow - he told himself - he would have the whole afternoon free for himself and his lion.

His lion - _his lion_ , the very thought that he had, to hold and to worship, such a gorgeous creature put a smile to his face and suddenly, unexpectedly, the gray, bleak world brightened and the hours of dreadful tedium ahead of him no longer felt like eternity.

Distracted by the inner fantasies of his mind, he noticed too late that he was not alone in the cave. Footsteps echoed in the surrounding darkness - soil sprayed across the ground by the action of an awkward gait but he saw no shape, no form in the shadow. Alarmed, he ducked behind the fallen head but it was of no use. Who or what ever it was out there laughed dryly and with that cackle killed spotlights.

Caesar was cast in absolute darkness and, having reacted so irrationally, he had at that moment lost his sense of orientation. All he had to work with was the stone and concrete head of Cat's Lair and his memory's vague recollection of its position with respect to the rest of the area, its alcoves and side passages. Silently he stood and stepped around the figure, keeping his right hand on it. He heard again those heavy, low footsteps and the chilling sound of sand and soil spreading in its advance.

Advance? His heart pounded - the disturbance did not come from one place or one general location but from random and indistinct spots all over and around the cavern.

He stopped - he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. A presence hovered directly behind him. He could sense the breathing, the radiating heat of the body of the unseen stranger. Knowing that every moment could be his last, he thought that if he could run straight from the Thundercat ruins and reach the distant wall of the excavation site, then he could feel his way through the area, find a tunnel entrance and escape to a safer place - a place with more light. But before he had even stepped one foot forward into his plan an arm wrapped around his chest and a hand gripped his jaw shut.

In the short struggle that followed he tried to bite the interloper's furry hand but it was too little, too late. His head was smashed against a pillar of metal and concrete. At once his mind went blank and the world ceased to be.


	16. Chapter 16

The sun had set by the time Kara had emerged from the murky tunnels of the underworld to the nirvanic bliss of the heights of Metropolis.

That morning, through Marsala, the Lord of the Thundercats had said that he wanted to meet with him later that day - and, the starry shades of evening drawing near, he hoped to reach the Imperial Tower not too late for comfort. He was as nervous and anxious as the average citizen might be but atop the usual feelings of uneasiness for him the situation had another dimension of dread. In his whole life he had never been so formally called on to see his father. And in all the previous times he had gone to see him, the Master of Activities was always there - there to keep them apart, there to never let them touch. But not that night, that night they were to be alone together.

He rode the private turbo lift up to the office, feeling that searing pain between his eyes again. He had had pains like that in his head and face - and nosebleeds too - on and off for as far back as he could remember, but never had the symptoms come at the intensity or at the frequency that they had been that day. Indeed, that whole week since his last doctor's visit.

Thankfully, the car came to its stop and the jarring, bone-bending migraine ceased. Although relieved, he was in a foggy trance, his head hot and sweaty, his gait limp and uneven. It was the cold air of the empty lobby and a short rest on a couch that alleviated the lingering discomfort.

And with that, he rose to his feet and walked to the door of the Thunderian leader's official chambers.

"Father?" Kara asked, knocking on the doorframe, entering the darkened office in the boldness of renewed, naive vigor. "Father, you wanted to see me?" His eyes searched through the obscured details of the room but his gaze was transfixed on a small, fluorescent table-lamp. It was on and yet the vast chamber remained cast in shadow. "Father?" he pled, his voice trembled in the wake of pent-up fear.

An unseen chair creaked across the floor - the sharp, atonal disturbance betrayed its location. "I am here, my son," a gruff voice answered. It had come from a figure that stood and walked along side a set of rectangular windows. The blackened view of the universe unveiled was rivaled only by the abject darkness of the office. "We have much to discuss, Kara." He paused to sigh. "You were in the underworld today - I saw you."

The lion-cub hung his head, uncertain how the old lion had known or what he had seen: "I've displeased you, father, I -"

"No, no. In a way, yes, it was a good thing that you went and came to know that place up close," he paused - no more than a few feet from his son and yet - "it showed you the alternative to what you have up here. Down there, that's the future you face, if you are not careful."

"Would you banish me to that hell?" He looked up, shocked to notice just how close he was to the Lord of the Thundercats - never before, to his memory, had he ever been so close to his sole surviving parent. Neither Marsala nor his father had allowed it.

"Kara," he crept yet closer, "it isn't I who'd do the banishing." He laid his hands on the youth's shoulder. "By the ancient, Amazonian traditions, you have come of age and so it is proper now that you have a larger role in the management of Metropolis." He stopped for a moment, let go of the lion-cub and pressed his hands over his lips, covering his face. "You have to mate first -"

The youngster's eyes widened. Standing, as he was, next to the semicircular table, gothic shadows outlined the contours of his face. "Mate? What are you talking about?"

"You must breed," Phaeton answered, dryly.

"Why wasn't I asked first? Why didn't you -" he shook his head violently, reawakening that pain in his face, around his eyes. Thoughts, abhorrent thoughts of betraying Caesar came to his mind and he wished nothing more, nothing less that the whole idea - "No. No!"

"You must do it. Marsala has already arranged it with a noble lion family that suits us. You know Agripina, don't you?"

Kara staggered backward. Suddenly something that had happened earlier that day made sense to him. Too much sense.

"It is important that the mating be done as soon as possible." He reached forward. "If you don't do it now, then there's a chance, a strong chance, that your children will be outcasts."

"Throwbacks?" The pulsating stab at the bridge of his nose caused him to bleed from his nostrils. "Isn't our line pure?"

Phaeton sighed. "We are prisoners, that's what we are and I'm sorry, son. I tried to keep this from happening to you but all my efforts, all my years of planning, have been failures. And at the end, even the strongest medicine couldn't stop your true nature from advancing -"

Kara gulped, confident then more than ever before that his father new.

"When you become Lord of the Thundercats you will live here, in this office, in the shadows. You will move about only in the darkness. You will let no one near you. You will be close to no one, not your children, your wife, your friends. No one will ever see your face again."

"That's insane," again he shook his head violently and again he staggered. "I don't want that, I don't want to live like you, father."

"I know, I know," it was he who hung his head that time, "but it's for your own good. You and I are outcasts of the very society we claim master. But don't you see - Doctor Pallas told me about what you thought of your face," he lifted his hand to Kara's chin. "When you were down in the depths, did you feel a kinship with the throwbacks?"

"Father, you frighten me -"

"You should be afraid," he said as he walked into the slant of bluish, fluorescent light of the lamp as if falling upon his sword.

"By Jagga!"

The lion-cub tried to turn away but Phaeton had grabbed hold of his shoulder and kept him at bay.

"This is your future," he said, "this is why I sent you to all those doctors all your life. It's more than just headaches - it's that inscription, that motto above the throne," he pointed to the words- something about the golden, glimmering inscription had an air of blood, fresh and oozing.

As his father rambled on, he studied the old lion's face, a face once intimately familiar to him. Deformed, animalistic - had it not been for his sleek, shrunken frame, the Lord of the Thundercats would have been no different from the very workers who toiled in the hot bowels of Third Earth.

"I don't want to be lord!" Kara screamed aloud, shouting over his father, casting the die in a verbal spar. "I don't want to rule - the lies. I am a Thundercat, father and my code predates your precious -"

"Son, please," the lord pleaded, "think about your future. If _they_ ever knew, if they ever suspected -"

"Let Metropolis crumble and this satanic world order fall. There's more to this life than this hell, I know it, I just know it. There has to be - I'm in love with Caesar," he let it out and the force of the weight removed made his sign in exhaustion.

Phaeton's jaw shut tight with an audible click and for a moment or two the chamber resounded in absolute silence. He looked on aghast at what his son had revealed. He gasped and turned back to the shadows. "Kara," his whispers echoed as he slunked into his secret room. "Kara," his glossy, brown eyes shined with welled tears.

At last he vanished into the antechamber - the door blending perfectly with the encasing walls - and with that the young lion stood alone.


	17. Chapter 17

The windows were shut, blocked with heavy curtains of lead and black velvet - the soft glow of streetlights broke through their seams. The doors were closed, secure with sturdy bolts of steel - a cool current of air vented from their crevices. The vast chamber, cloaked in shadowy, murky haze, was lit only by a pair of lamps: one a handheld quarts flask, that glowed a smoky blue that Algernon held as he studied an instrument panel, one an elongated rod of white that flickered at odd intervals, that hovered over the unconscious Caesar as he lay naked in a glass tube.

The doctor, at the center of the lab, worked on an apparatus he had wheeled to position from the electrical closet. The unwilling prisoner, shackled by wrist and ankle, held in place by straps along back and waist, was confined in that tomb of crystal and wires at the far end of the room. At the apex of that triangle of figures was the madman's red-eyed creation - it watched, it waited, patiently, unceasingly.

The semi-cylindrical top of the glass enclosure had two, toothed tracks that ran on the edge of the flat, mirrored base. Ridding on that guide, up and down the length of the tube, was a scanning, laser-mirror sensor. Non-fixed, color-coded cords connected the optical processor to the inventor's control console and to the platform upon which the automaton crouched.

With the turn of a dial the mechanism sputtered to life - Algernon stepped away from the rack of blinking oscilloscopes to the robot. The frenzied motion of his hands directed it to stand and it complied - the sounds of its clear, plastic cover echoed sharply.

The scanner's motors whizzed and quickly brought the electric eye to the top of Caesar's head. Its hydrogen, neon laser turned on - a line of bright red dropped onto his body. The shape and contour of his minutest feature deformed the line and the mirrors, that caught the reflection from several angles, transferred the information to a series of photo-sensors embedded on the base of the cylinder. The entire arrangement advanced less than one red wavelength to capture the next image at a rate of thirty thousand infinitesimal snapshots per second. In a little more than a minute the whole of his physical details were recorded on computer.

The three-dimensional, holographic image was translated from a series of slopes, gradients and geometric figures to a discrete set of points, points that were mapped onto the shiny surface of the seran sheath that clothed the manmade automaton.

A long bar dropped down slowly from the ceiling and stopped a precarious five feet above the robot. Its dull, rectangular façade split apart into a thousand, thin arms - segmented and jointed - that spread over the red-eyed machine like a net. The grasping ends of the spider-like appendages latched onto the encasing plastic at those predetermined points and either pulled or prodded the clear covering. The head was totally obscured by the sliverous limbs, the hands, and feet, up and down the metal frame they gathered in various degrees of concentration until the wrap took on the outline of Caesar's physicality.

Without adequate or stable farmland, Metropolis gathered its supply of meat and other animal, vegetable products from synthetic means. Elaborate contrivances had been devised over the course of centuries that reproduced the shapes of fruits, the textures of vegetables, the effect of spices but meat was different. There was no aesthetic reason as to why a slice of steak had to resemble the cow from which, in ancient times, it would have come from. In that way flesh was easier to cultivate, only energy - electricity - was needed for the replication of proteins and so, employing similar, time-tested technology, the automaton was able to complete its disguise.

Immediately, out of the openings that dotted its outer framework, the robot extruded what appeared to be a noxious mixture of chewed-raw meat and blood. The goo gradually and deliberately filled the gap between the metal of the cyborg and the clear, plastic of the wrap. Once that process was complete, the tin arms retreated, reformed the metal bar and retracted back into the ceiling. The shape of the covering had set but the tone of the skin remained imperfect - one last step was required.

Algernon hurried to his creation. He held its hand - the blood-flesh blend had the consistency of gelatin - and let it to the front of the raised platform. He pressed buttons on a small remote control. Tiny currents were produced by the robot's endoskeleton; its alternating fields caused the iron-rich blood to coalesce into streams. The flesh reformed bonds to gain a firmer elasticity.

Pressing another button caused a low vibration to course throughout the automaton's new 'body' that itself made the seran wrap splinter and fall to the floor, a pile of scraps.

Fully exposed to the air, controlled reaction caused the 'skin' to acquire variations in tone, shade and texture. Hair, too, began to grow at an exaggerated rate. The only defects were the minor splotches of blood that oozed out of random segments of the living cell layers and pulsating fluids that covered the sterile, mechanism of the robot.

The doctor made the required adjustments as he inspected the results of his handiwork.

"That's better now, isn't it?" The human-tiger pushed back the locks of hair that had just stopped growing and tucked them behind the ears, examining the specialized cartilage. He ran his hands down the face, the neck, the shoulders. He brought his palms to the supple, well-toned chest in awe that even the nipples had come out so well and, feeling with tantalizing fingers the musculature of the stomach and the sensitive areas below, he smiled that it had been a wild, unprecedented success. Indeed, judging by the reactions to his touch, he knew that no one, no one, including him perhaps, could tell the cyborg apart from a real man.

Algernon lifted the cylinder's glass top. The man-machine picked up Caesar's unresponsive body and draped him across its shoulder. The doctor led the way to the door that he unlocked. He directed his creation through the darkness of the connecting room.

All the while the jostling, the jarring motion made the captive human groan as he became more and more aware of the throbbing pain that stabbed his temples. He was already uttering comprehensible fragments by the time he was shown to the 'dungeon' - a cramped, walk-in closet at the recess of the mad scientist's chamber of horrors.

The machine dropped him down to the floor, near a pile of his clothes.

He looked up: "What? What the?" He turned his head side to side in shock at the image that had then presented itself full in view.

The doctor stepped into view: "So glad of you to join us," he said, mockingly.

"I don't understand," he struggled to regain his balance, "you've cloned me?"

The red tiger laughed dryly. "No, no," he whispered, "it is a machine. I made it to look like you. What do you think? What do you have to say?"

"Why? But why?" Caesar's eyes scanned up and down at himself, at his exact, mechanical duplicate, unable to rationalize the situation. The cyborg kicked his chest and flung him across the floor. He slid until his prostrate body came to rest against the wall.

Again the human, tiger half-breed laughed. "Come, now, no need to grumble," the prisoner groaned as he held his battered head. "The pain will be gone shortly, I'm sure, yes, it will come to an end soon. Soon 'why' won't be much of a problem for you."

The man and his creation shuffled out of the door - it shut to the tune of locks clicking in place.

"No! No! Kara!" he screamed as he got to his feet. "Help!"

Only Algernon's hideous laughter answered his plea.


	18. Chapter 18

A bitter, cold air clung to the concrete and steel caverns of Metropolis. It was the dead of night and despite the harshness life moved on, never stopping, never resting, as it hurtled into that starry void of space and time unceasingly. Cars drove across looping streets and bustling highways, denizens walked along over-looking passages and winding causeways. Businesses traded commodities and factories delivered goods. Supermarkets restocked and shopping malls revamped for the season.

In its own way, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps unsuspectingly, the city resembled that very underworld it tried so desperately to be ignorant of.

Kara wandered the crowds and files of bystanders, a permanent chill cast over his body. He shivered, his hair stood on end. He was lost in a once-familiar world that had become alien. The areas, the stops, the scene, the people were all different, all changed. Something had been altered, something that was once now was no more - yet it was small, imperceptible, it had to be, he reasoned, how else could the others be oblivious to it but him?

But what was it? Nothing had happened to the city - the buildings and massive structures still stood. Nothing, too, had transformed the people - the Thunderians and humans still divided themselves into their mutual spheres of societal influence.

What was it? What was it? What was it? The words, the thoughts careened in his mind and suddenly the answer came to him - the realization crashed upon him unexpectedly in a flurry of insight, a sunrise at midnight. Stopped amidst a loud throng of sight-seeing tourists he realized that only his world had come to an end and despite the groan and heaving with which it had tumbled down to hell, only he and he alone was aware of its coming to pass.

 _He_ had changed. _He_ was different.

It was terror, newfound and unrelenting, that faced him, not in the piecemeal degrees of gradual logic, but all at once, all together. Out of the lofty heights of the royalty into which he had been born, he had become the stranger, the despised outsider. He did not belong and he knew that for his safety alone he had to go.

The danger he faced heightened his senses. Noises, from the jarring to the slight, almost imagined, alerted his immediate attention. His nerves were on edge, frayed and he had had more than enough. The pain in his head, the throb in his face made him lose track of his surroundings - he found himself in and out of conscious control until, at last, he had stumbled into a turbo-lift.

The bright, white lights of the elevator car shocked him back to reality.

He was not alone - to the side was a man, standing, holding a newspaper, its cover and blazing, black headlines obscured by folds, to front were two Thunderian guards, a pair of the very guards that Marsala had put in place. Yet they had not stopped Kara, they had not -

The lion got to his feet and laughed - the panther cats, in flimsy uniforms, snuck coy, antsy glimpses at him. Looking at the blinking control dials he sighed in relief. He was going down, reaching, step-by-step, the level of his beloved, his one and only. Out of the darkness, into the light, his mind turned from the infernal torture of his soul, to the divine bliss of his Caesar - his human.

Ever since that day in the pleasure garden, that fateful day that through the course of time had come to seem to be an episode of history long past, his trips to the lower levels of Metropolis were more regular, more common place - and the familiarity resulted in the sense that he felt he a better knowledge of that terrain than the popular attractions and youthful locales of the upper-crust society he had been born into.

But the greatness of that world of the clouds and skies was a lie - founded and supported by a lie. A lie that purity was strength, a lie that the throwbacks were 'disposable,' that superiority was virtuous, that slavery, masked and disguised by euphemistic semantics, was acceptable. He was a Thundercat and he saw no question of moral ambiguity for he had no choice but to live by letter of the law, the ancient, timeless Code of Thundera. The power and influence of evil and corruption had to be expunged.

And so, rejecting the future his father had planned for him, he found his true place at last, in the depths.

The elevator continued to plummet, gears turning, ridding on toothed tracks, ideas and indistinct notions formed in his mind. He imagined that with Caesar's help he could vanish and hide in the underworld and those long-forgotten areas of the city. His face would change and soon he would be unrecognizable even to those who had known him his whole life. He reasoned that it was -

"Sector five-fifteen," a computerized voice announced - the turbo-lift's doors opened to the sound of an electronic bell.

Kara noticed that he was alone - the man with the newspaper was gone and the guards, too, had stepped out along the way. Odd, but he had no recollection of the elevator stopping at any moment. Cautiously, though, he passed through the open doorways and looked left and right nervously. With that, tentative pause, he entered into the blackness of the absolute night.

He smiled for he had in his grasp the open possibility of a new life with his beloved, a new world set free from his father's reach and that of the malevolent forces that kept him in power.

As he walked the desolate streets, he had the feeling that the few people who were there looked at him differently. Whereas before they had been content to ignore him, now his image was a cause for second looks - "Why?" he wondered.

He stopped and put a hand on his face. His cheek felt hot - in the coldness he had not noticed it - and the skin was taught, too, the flesh was swollen. He merely bumped his nose with his finger and it reeled with pain - it was loose, its bones softening, coming undone.

Terrified, he tried to scream but the muscles in his jaw shifted, he felt them move down his chin. His eyes welled and his back slumped forward - the pain and discomfort was extreme. He ducked into an alcove to recover. He tried to open his mouth a little, just until he sensed he could go no further. He stopped and opened it a little more. His jaw was agape and he began the slow, aching process of closing his lips. In that manner his exercise alleviated the abrupt change that his body had undergone.

All his life he had had such episodes but the doctors were always there to help him. The doctors - Pallas, his father's silent, obedient accomplice. He wondered how much the man knew but worse still, why he kept silent. Indeed, what would happen if the people knew the truth about who and what their leader was?

And what about the sword? How could it have allowed such things to come to pass? Jagga and Liono, surely they were not just sitting back, watching idly even from the astral plane, that ethereal paradise where the spirits of the great ones rested for all eternity. Astral - the stars, the field of stars -

The back doors of the hospital were locked; the small, inner lobby was unlit. He explored the building's perimeter and in short time found the main entrance. Up the brick steps of its dark-yellow, outer façade, through the open doorways, he entered the scene that was unfolding in the large reception area. Doctors and administrators yelled at each other and at officers of the Amazonian Guard.

He snuck behind the unruly mob and listened at the front desk.

"I have told you, already, doctor," said a man in black uniform, "and I will not repeat the consequences of disobedience. The license of this hospital has been revoked -"

The head of the establishment was about to speak but the same solider cut him off -

"The order comes from Lord Phaeton himself," he rebutted sternly. A fellow soldier behind him - a courier, or so his uniform designated - displayed a rolled-up scroll to his superior and the gathered staff.

"This hospital is the property of Caesar Antonious, of the noble Claudian family. It is protected by customary rules of engagement and cannot be unilaterally shut down, as you put it, or repossessed by anyone without a due and proper hearing of the great council of the Thundercats and Amazonians."

The soldier sighed - he had taken the scroll and banged it in his palm. "As I was about to say, Caesar Antonious is wanted man -"

"Wanted?" Kara butted in, unannounced. A doctor pulled and tugged him gently to the side. "For what? Who ordered it?"

The Amazonian laughed, arching his head back in amusement - but the glare in his eyes betrayed his true annoyance. "He has been charged with treason -"

The doctors and nurses gasped as echoes of 'treason' resounded in loud whispers.

"His crime is instigating the throwback population to rebel. I can divulge nothing more at the moment - the evidence is being gathered as we speak and will be made public in due time. Right now we have most of our active rank and file hunting the fugitive."

The lion stood in shock. His father had trumped the charges, he knew that, but he did not know how to explain that. How was he to tell them that he was Kara, the son of Phaeton and heir to the Thundercat throne? Would they believe him? Would they care?

He was about to speak again but stopped his lips, his voice would have only been drowned by the shouting and arguing that broken out among the forces gathered in the lobby. The words 'twenty-four hours,' 'immediate ceasing and desisting' were thrown about, back and forth. Weapons glimmered, law books opened.

"I guess we don't have much time," a female, feline voice said - she dragged the youth into a semi-lit passage.

"It's you," Kara turned to face the cheetah doctor. She wore a white lab coat with her name stenciled over the left pocket - a stethoscope's bell was tucked within, the tubes that emanated from it obscured most of the tag.

"Yes, I suppose it's me, I haven't been not-me in a while."

"Don't you recognize me, I'm -" he caught himself - "Liono."

"Liono, hmmm?" She held his chin and lifted his head into the slants of dim light. "Well, isn't your face all banged up? Just how did you get it all swollen like this?"

Kara tried to speak but she was holding onto his chin and he could not open his mouth wide enough to answer her - so he mumbled.

"I see -" she let go.

"Where's Caesar?" he asked, in whisper.

"I don't know. He didn't come back and we haven't heard from him all day."

"What's going to happen?" In horror he saw that his newfound plans had crumbled. He could do little, little - having repudiated his father and his father's world, he no longer had the power to make right the injustices that were at that moment at work in the hospital nor those that were sure to be done latter, if the soldiers were to find Caesar.

"No, no!" he shouted in his mind. A solution _would be found_ \- the answer _was at hand_. It was but a setback, minor disturbance of no substance. He had to be strong - he could not give up.

"We'll have to see," she said, dryly. "But we won't give up without a fight. The Amazonians can't just bully us around, no matter whose orders they have. This is a hospital, it can't just shut down at a moment's notice, we have patients and employees and their welfare has to be taken care of first. It'll give us enough time to maneuver our way out of this, you'll see. But as for Caesar -"

A faceless figure wandered into the hall and drew the cheetah back to whisper in her ear. She told Kara not to go anywhere, that she would be right back to check on his face. She left with the mysterious man and vanished in the lobby.

The lion-cub moped about the darkness, passively listening to the arguments. He felt nervous - that same, faceless figure had returned to the hall, albeit at a distance. He turned from the immediate scene to the recess of the corridor. Recalling his previous tour through the building, he traced a path to the back exit and set out immediately to reach that area.

Although it had been locked closed from the outside, he hoped that at least from the inside it could open and he could leave unnoticed.

His heightened senses of alertness made him feel the overpowering, chocking dread of terror. By gradual degrees he had noticed that he had begun to develop newer, deeper notions of awareness - instincts he had had no knowledge of before. He knew without knowing that he was being followed.

He reached the lobby but continued on, toward a set of swinging doors and opened them violently without passing through them. Quickly, he turned back and hid under a secretary's desk, carefully avoiding pitfalls or any such disturbance that could give his covert presence away. Crouching in the shadows he waited and listened - listened as the footsteps announced the arrival of that faceless figure.

It, who or whatever it was, stopped and waited, too. The damped but perceptible disturbance of the double-doors caught its attention. Guessing that he had gone through that passage, the stranger sighed and stepped out of the lobby into the rear hallway.

Kara remained in the shadows until he was satisfied that he was relatively alone. He arose and sprinted to the glass doors. The portals would not open automatically and for a few moments he panicked. He buried his claws into the crevice between the doors and tried with all his strength to fight against their resistance.

Exhausted and desperate, he grabbed a table lamp and flung it against the clear walls - but it bounced off. Undaunted, he picked it up from the floor and flung it again. Again it rebounded and he caught it. He did not stop and in response the crystal substance formed a small, slight crack. He kicked it and it shattered - the flat sheet of glass dissolved into a million, tiny bits of sparkling shards.

Overall, the operation took no more than a minute but he feared still that the sounds of his struggle had blown his cover.

He rushed out of the hospital into the streets. Empty and abandoned, he did not feel safe in the open avenues. He felt instead the telltale pressure of eyes watching him, following his every move. Alone, he realized he had only one, last place of refuge, one last hope.


	19. Chapter 19

The voice was distant, garbled: "What's your report, corporal?" it asked.

"The subject left the hospital, sir," he answered into a microphone that arched from the outer lobe of his ear to his mouth.

"The exits had been locked," the sounds of papers flapping echoed in his head.

"He broke through the window, sir."

A long, tense pause - the officer in black stepped out of the shattered pane of glass and, treading noisily over the broken bits with rubber boots, he entered the empty streets.

"I haven't lost him completely -"

"It is important that he be apprehended alive, corporal -"

"I understand my mission."

The Amazonian soldier stalked close to the side of the building. An open, unblocked alley caught his eye, - a whisking shred of canvas was fluttering in a dying current. He crossed the narrow street and poked his head into the passage cautiously, his hand on his weapon. The corridor was littered with trash - but no movement, no indication of covert activity was evident.

He brought the thin, wire microphone closer to his lips and covered the instrument with his hand: "He's heading to hell."

"Can you be sure?" the female voice asked.

"He's using the trail we identified this morning."

Again a pause.

"You are not authorized to enter the underworld."

He rushed through the passage, careful to avoid the murky pools of sooty runoff.

"I repeat, you are not authorized -"

"If I act fast, I can catch him before he enters the manhole."

He reached the edge of the portal and crouched low over its rim - the mark of a fresh, wet footprint glimmered in the eerie, electric light. A breeze ruffled the branches of nearby trees, the shrill tune of the leafy instruments resonated in the silence of the night. He looked to the side, to the back façade of an abandoned building, in time to see a drawn-back window curtain fall to place and obstruct his view.

Sighing for a moment, unaware of the voice that called to him in his ear, he turned his head up, over the baseness of the world and stared in awe at the thousands of towers, cloud-topped structures and dreamy grandeur of the City of Metropolis. The lights of little, rectangular windows were bright and multicolored and could be seen forever and ever that, coupled with the somber gray of concrete and steel, formed a vista of profound beauty.

It seemed so eternal - he thought - it could last for all time, the clockwork of the universe was eternal, it had to be, it was perfect.

In the depths of the vertical shaft, Kara remained still and quiet. His eyes roamed behind the veil of shadow that cloaked his face. The figure above had stopped, distracted for a moment and he took the opportunity work his way down the ladder. He was close, so close to the bottom that he could almost feel the ground beneath him. Every moment, every second counted, time was not on his side, he feared and he knew he would have to go slow for the water level below remained high.

At last his one foot reached the point where the iron-rungs ended and the underworld began. Nervously, tentatively, he let his other foot touch the ground - the stone was wet with a slight, thin coat of moisture whose glimmer shone in his eyes like that of the moon on a clear night. Hovering above, the manhole's opening was no larger than his fist and it appeared, too, that the stranger who had chased him from the hospital had vanished.

He thanked Jagga, clung unto the walls, away from the central tract of water and used the red-light posts to show him the way.


	20. Chapter 20

A dense, violent swirl of gas clung by static to the high ceiling. Electric sparks, discharged along wide arcs, scorched through the smoky cloud and made its mass glow like a hot column of plasma. The framework of the roof was concealed by that eerie effect of toxic waste. The faint suggestions of shapes that broke through the haze and the areas of clear edges that were obscured by distance hinted at the ornate style and gothic sculpture of the limit of the spacious, vaulted chamber.

The walls were tinged with the oily soot of past fires and the grimy outgrowths of mildew. Tubes and bulkheads ran left to right, wired and pillars hung top to bottom. On four stacked levels were engraved alcoves. The oval portals were either lit or blacked-out, in user or empty.

The floor was sloped in a gentle v-shape. The stone and dirt was littered with torn rags, withered bones, steaming cesspools and running streams. Creatures unknown to the urbanites crawled about the remains and sludge of that mess on six or eight legs, eyes large and dark, bodies long and thin.

Whistles rung, plumes of white, gray smoke sprayed out of tiny, sharply edged openings into air. Gray, frothy foam trickled from the sound-horns to the riveted pipes and collected around numerous indentations. Across the sea of time, past uncharted ages, the vile fluids had corroded the ironworks and reduced the steel to flaky shards of red-brown rust.

The workers in the cubbyholes put away the implements of labor and filed out into near, slow-moving lines. They marched in-step to the demonic timings of mechanical rhythms; they walked on like shapeless forms of moving shadows. Catwalks and loosely held ladders resounded with the scuffle of their retreating to the hives at the end of their shift.

The men that left were exhausted and lethargic, even the new batch of throwbacks that entered the station was tired and dejected.

Pumalo stood at his post. He rotated the arms of the relay and aimed the arrows straight up - but just when he was ready to turn on the power switch, he noticed an unusual sight at the recess of the antechamber. He paused and studied the mounded pile of scraps with his eyes. Sensing no movement he approached the heap.

The man-cat growled and pulled the cover back. "No!" he almost shouted as he saw the lion-cub unconscious on the stone floor. He shook him awake gently, picking him up by the shoulders, asking in whisper repeatedly: "What are you doing here?"

Kara rubbed his eyes and saw the throwback's face emerge from the oblivion of dream to the harshness of reality. Yet, for the first time in a long time a smile came to his lips. He was about to speak but the stern shouts of a foreman interrupted his train of thought.

In immediate response Pumalo turned from the teenager to the relay. He told his friend to stay in the corner until the overseer had passed the area. He turned on the apparatus and with that the labor began. The toil was slow going at the start but he was diligent and unerring.

The puma tried to pay no attention, to arouse no concern when at last the foreman had reached his section. The supervisor merely peeked into the alcove's elliptical entrance and, seeing nothing suspicious, nothing inappropriate, he moved on to the next relay. Only when he was sure that the overseer had exited the chamber did he put the instrument on standby and moved to sit next to the young lion.

He was struck by how different Kara looked. The wry cub struggled to his feet. He had been asleep for hours but even that long lapse of rest had not alleviated his sore body, indeed, it had only aggravated his discomfort.

"I hope you're not mad," he said, his voice unnaturally soft and timid.

"No, not mad, but surprised." He smiled and seeing his friend's eyes well he tried to wipe away the tears. But the slightest, gentlest touch was unbearably painful to the young lion and he winced in shock. "What's wrong? What's happened to you?"

"I look different, don't I?" He grabbed the man-cat around the shoulders and clasped him in a tight embrace. "Pumalo, I have no where to go."

"Surely," he said, patting the youth's red mane, "you must have someone, somewhere."

"Look at me. I can't possibly live in that city. No, I'm alone - I didn't tell you everything about me." He paused and drew back. "I don't know how to begin, so I'll be blunt. My father is Phaeton, the Lord of the Thundercats. I am or was in line to inherit -"

The deformed puma eased back in an odd mixture of fear and reverence. "Um," he struggled to find the words as he let go of the teenager. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have -"

"Don't be sorry," he reached for the nervous Thunderian and his touch was met with no resistance, "I'm one of you - I can't go back, Metropolis is a lie. Everything's clear and nothing can be like it once was. The break is permanent." He hung his head, half-in and half-out of shame: "My father showed me we are both throwbacks and I told him I love Caesar."

The puma rubbed the side of his head against Kara's: "Truth be told," he purred, "I always thought there was something different about you."

Kara smiled but quickly tried to hide his face. Pumalo brought the youth's hands away and uncovered his features. The young lion's character and profile had transformed considerably - the jaw and nose had changed, metamorphosized from the common, humanoid type to a cross between that which was accepted by society and that which it had rejected, that ancient quality of those on the other side of enlightenment. Blood had oozed from the eyes and dried patches remained clung to the fur of the upper lip.

"How could you tell, Pumalo?"

The puma wrapped his mighty arms around the youth and gave him a quick, playful kiss on the cheek. "We know each other," he laughed, "we just do."

The lion giggled - the relay's buzzer sounded.

It was an alarm that could not be ignored; the device could not be left to run idle forever. The puma arose to his feet and manned the instrument. The work was rough but as time passed the pace slowed.

"It's still the early morning around here," he said, positioning the hands. "The relays aren't too bad at this time of day. Have you gone to see Caesar?"

Kara shook his head: "I tried to find him last night but he wasn't at the hospital and no one there had heard from him all day."

"Hmmm," the older male cat mused, "is it unusual?"

"Very - I think." The frightening memory of that faceless man following him resurfaced - he had thought it was a dream, a nightmare but it was real, all too real. He shut his eyes and shook his head. "Soldiers from the Amazonian guard are looking for him."

"To harm him?" the worker paused for a moment. "I kill him?"

The fallen noble answered: "I wouldn't be surprised - my father must be framing him, trumping-up or inventing charges just to destroy him, just because -" he walked up to Pumalo and asked in hushed tones: "Will there be a meeting today?"

"Yes, there should be." He whisked the relay's arms around left and right as the bells and lights indicated. "I'll take you with me."

He rubbed the puma's short, soft fur, purring to himself, "I can wait, it'll give me time to think." But the gravity of his situation was too much even for a Thundercat of his resolve and determination to handle. "I don't know what to do," he lamented, "what will become of me?"

"You'll be one, like the rest of us all. And if Caesar's life is in danger, we can hide him too. Things can live forever down here and never be noticed, Kara," he fretted the young lion's red locks, "ever."

The ruins of Cat's Lair remained undisturbed untouched, nearly two miles below the parched surface of Third Earth. Like much from the early days of the Thundercat's arrival, the building was thought to have been a myth and its creator, Tygra, no more that a figment of imagination. It was even rumored among the historians that Liono, too, was a figure from obscure tall-tales. Certainly the stories of his exploits - or, if it was to be believed, his sword's exploits - were generally considered to be too ridiculous, too contrived to be real.

Sadly, that uncivilized age was said to be so far removed, so distant from the current era of progress that not only had most of the genuine history been lost but also and to a great extent purposefully forgotten. Considering the stature of Metropolis, it was easier to believe Thunderia's exodus to Third Earth had been a planned and well-coordinated affair. That the mingling of the felines and the humans was an instantaneous process, devoid of centuries of strife and slow, gradual evolution.

And for their own part the Amazonians were not too eager to write in their history books about their meager, arboreal existence or about the strange and unexplained segregation of their sexes. It seemed better to consider themselves a race of noble, peace-loving kingdoms that always had the potential for greatness - but that it was not until the Mutant and Lunatac Wars that the sleeping giant of their genius had awoke.

Even MummRa, the Ever-Living, even he had been cast aside by the educated and elite of the city. Little did they know that it was designed by the ancient one himself. How better to work the forces of evil but in secret? How better to be crafty but without watching eyes at constant vigil?

_The mummy watched the scene unfold before his circular pool of boiling blood and unhallowed ingredients. The stew fumed and in the spreading wake of its froth he saw a mob of throwbacks file into the massive cavern. A dry smile came to his shriveled lips. A low, thunderous roar echoed in the sarcophagus chamber._

_The ancient spirits of evil waited patiently for their hour of vindication._

Kara walked into the deep cavern next to Pumalo. The two made their way around the rows of seated works to the back of the makeshift auditorium where they had been before. The lion did not bow his head low; he had little reason to anymore. The chamber was semi-dark and the shadows hid his features - and what hints of his character that did show were quite strikingly akin to the throwback in nature.

Still, the changes had not been complete and his head ached. He knew his nose was bleeding but he dared not wipe the stains for fear of the pain that the touch would cause him.

The puma found an isolated spot not far from the rugged walls. Without a word he sat down on the rocks and helped the lion sit beside him.

A lion-tiger was almost done with his speech when he added: "Time and space," he spoke with the mellow-gruff tones of an older Thunderian, "existence itself are all illusions. Nothing ever dies. Nothing ever truly dies. Those who have come before us, those who we have known and have left us are not dead. The world that once existed on Third Earth exists still. The past where such things are true is as real as our present, as certain as our future. It is only our limited nature that makes it inaccessible. We are free men, freer than those who claim to be our masters. We-"

The black-haired man stepped out of the side of the fallen head of the lair - he had been pacing and throwing up dust. "'We,' Solon? And what are you? What is that 'we'?"

Kara immediately noticed what was wrong. Besides the unusual tone, it was the eyes - the glowing, wet orbs of hazel were dry and red.

"I'll tell you what they say," he pointed up, violently, "to them you are nothing and you will remain nothing. You already know your past; do you want me to tell you your future? Imagine the boot of your Thunderian master, stomping out the face of all who'll ever come after you. What keeps you alive? What stops them from eliminating you all? Ah, yes, the machines, they need you to run the machines. But soon, soon they'll have machines that do that too and then what further use will they have for you? That's your future, pretty site, isn't it?"

The audience gasped. Kara turned to Pumalo - his friend was tense in shock.

"I don't know what's wrong," the youth whispered. "That's not like him -"

"My friends, I have known you for a long time, longer than anyone and I consider no one in this world more important than you," he lay a hand on Solon's arm as if to console him, "that's why it pains me to say this - no, I failed to understand myself the depths of evil that the citizens of Metropolis were capable of." He returned his attention to the throngs. "Yesterday, as I was walking along the streets I witnessed a demonstration. An inventor had just unveiled to the press and public his latest creation. A worker robot, one, he claimed, that was flawless, one that needed no rest. It, he said, could toil in the hives forever and ever without the needs and amenities of living beings and, better still, without the mind or spirit to rebel."

A throwback in the front row stood and roared: "No! That's impossible!"

The human with dark eyes walked forward and placed his hands around the worker's face, drawing back his mane. Almost in tears he spoke: "I know, I know. It seems incredible, doesn't it? How could it be? How could they, what were they thinking? Oh, but how they've been thinking. Year after year, decade to decade, centuries heaped one upon the other they have struggled to create such a thing and now, now at last they have succeeded." He buried his face in his hands, weeping loudly: "What will they do to you? What will they do?"

A group of weary panthers came to their feet and rushed the stage. "Caesar," one shouted, "say the word and it shall be done."

"My friends, I have never advocated violence - but that was -"

Echoes of 'violence' reverberated through the site.

Pumalo stood and, helping Kara up, said: "It's wrong, I can sense it. I don't know how but I know it's not right."

"We can't sit still. They who whip and torture you know only pain and it's with pain that we must answer them. We must destroy the base upon which their power rests - those infernal machines."

"Yes, the machines!" a lion roared, raising his clenched fist in defiance above the crowd. "Destroy the machines!"

"Flee the underworld, storm the surface and destroy their centers of business, their peace and way of life. Shake them to core," he growled, "break their chains!"

But the call to action was not met with universal acclaim and even as the fiery man spoke small clusters of workers evacuated the chamber.

"We'll go to the others and tell them, they'll be willing to help us."

"Make it so - take out anyone who interferes, whether it's a foreman sell-out or a throwback who wants to remain a slave - let him die a slave."

"I don't like where this is going," Pumalo whispered - Kara nodded.

The young lion could not believe what he was hearing. Every impulse in him wanted to do something about it. He had failed with his father, he had said nothing to the soldiers and he was determined not to fail a third time.

The large cat dragged him toward the back of the vault despite the fact that the exits were already clogged. The teenager lagged backward, his stare pointed straight at the black-haired man. Their eyes suddenly met and for a moment he saw a glimmer of red shine through the hazel orbs.

"That's not Caesar," he shouted, "that's not Caesar!"

In the loud throng of the mob his words all but fell on deaf ears.

But the figure heard: "He's one of them!" he pointed and the others turned to see. "Get him!"

"No, Kara," he picked up the teenager and draped him over his back. The crowd, heated by its ringleader into action, had begun to encircle them. Already the exits were unreachable and the only open space left was at the back of the cavern. The darkness afforded no reassurance for all eyes were accustomed to the weak, blue illumination. "We're in it deep, cub."

"Wait, I see - keep walking back," six feet above the ground he was able to see things that otherwise he would have been oblivious to. "It's an opening on the wall."

"Can you see where it leads?"

"Too dark - no."

"Well, it's all we've got."

The lion grabbed hold of the alcove's jagged edge. He discovered with his hands that it was hollow. He quite easily pulled himself in. The confines were deep and a slight draft of air circulated within.

"It's a tunnel," he said, poking his head out. He saw that the mob was getting near, dangerously near. "Get in," his voice barely rose above the shouts of the approaching crowd.

Kara extended his hand - Pumalo took it and laughed.

The puma took hold of the rocky edge; the young lion held his shoulders and gave him the leverage to scale the short height. It was difficult for the throwback, despite his strength, only because of his great bulk. He shoved his leg into the hole - the cub seized his waist and helped him roll into the tunnel.

"You're safe, you're safe," he said, hugging the man-cat.

"Yes, we are, but not for long - run!"

The roaring throwbacks had reached the site of the alcove but it was too late - they had already lost interest in the two.

Kara and Pumalo trekked through the tunnel, stopping rarely to catch their breath. The passage was thin but they were the only ones there so it was not a problem to maneuver through the tight squeezes. The two followed the gradual upslope of the nearly level flooring. The walls were not rough but smooth and even - it was not a natural occurrence but it was not until they had reached an entire section of steps that it was apparent that the tunnel had been dug out by hand.

For the longest time they heard the battle cries of the workers - distant and muffled, dampened by the substance of the walls. Explosions and cries of terror followed, the ground rumbled and loose particles from the ceiling rained upon them. But as they traveled deeper and deeper, they eventually reached an area where there was relative quiet.

Another tunnel merged into theirs - a light came from its end and without wavering the pair ran to it.

"What is this place?" the large cat asked as he emerged into the other side of the darkness.

It was a room, small and cramped with books, broken desks and chairs. Scattered at the corner were discarded shelves. To one side was a thin, horizontal window almost on the edge of the wall and the room, to the other side was a locked, wooden door.

"Let's close up the hole," the lion suggested and the puma complied.

Everything in the room that room was moved and set in place before the oval-shaped portal. The plug was unstable but heavy and tightly convoluted. It would have taken an impressive labor to remove it.

"The whole world's going to hell, Pumalo and I don't know what to do about it."

The large cat held him in his arms for a fleeting moment of passing comfort - nervous, too, all he could do was grasp him tighter.


	21. Chapter 21

The single, wooden door was locked so tightly and framed so rigidly that it was almost an immovable part of the wall. Kara tried instinctively to try the knob but the brass fixture would not even turn or wiggle in his touch. Pumalo studied it, grabbed it but it only broke off in his hands - in shock, he let it fall to the floor.

The young lion knelt before the mangled remains of the internal mechanism of the lock. He poked his finger in and pushed out a long rod until the knob at the other side of the door fell. He peeked through the hole -

"It's a smaller room," he reported, "very dark."

"What can you see in it?" the large cat asked.

"Nothing - no, there's something big," he stood and stepped back. "I just can't tell what it is."

"It's not moving, is it?"

Kara shook his head.

The puma growled and rushed the wooden barrier. He forced the door out of its hinges until it dropped to pieces in the small, little room that the young lion had seen only in fragmented shadows. The sound of the crash was loud and jarring - in response the two were silent and still for half-a-minute, listening and waiting for any response that might come.

When they were sure that no one had been alerted to their presence they walked into the antechamber. The room was tiny; it had a door but no windows. Its walls were plaster-covered bricks, whitewashed but coated with dust and torn cobwebs.

"That's what I saw," the lion pointed to a spiral staircase. He stood at the foot of the stairs and looked up to the room above. It was even darker and more ghastly. It had a tall roof, smoke and blue haze clung to its bare façade. A slight, muffled hum came to his ears; it intensified as a spark flashed within that vast, cavernous chamber. A new but transitory sound, buzzing and clearly electrical, reverberated in the bright light's wake.

The throwback nodded, his well-developed body barely fit through the tight squeeze of the staircase but he forced himself to ascend the steps despite his limitation.

Kara followed him, but his footwear clanged the metal frame too loudly so he took his time.

Pumalo stopped as soon as the top of his head reached just above the floor of that new room. The windows were the first things that came to his attention - long, thin windows with black curtains peeled open. Cold, gray light, filtered through layers of clouds, seeped into the chamber from those finger-like portals. He turned his attention from the left to the right, in a slow, deliberate stride that took in the complete panoramic view of the spacious interior. Chains drooped from the ceiling; levers and blinking switches dotted the walls.

And he saw three platforms: one that was flat and had coils bolted to its corners, one that was glassy and had wires attached to its base and one position above the rest and had more coils, more wires and shredded flakes of a clear substance before it.

Another spark had formed: thin, plasmatic tendrils arched from the coiled and drew the columns together. The discharged snapped and separated from the metal - it formed a ring of hot, glowing air and vanished in a pop of blinding light. Only smoke and a blue haze were left behind.

He saw no one and despite the unnerving effects of the machinery, he judged that it was safe to go on. He reached behind and pulled the teenager up the rest of the way. He did not want to leave his friend behind - he was uneasy about the door and the blocked tunnel below.

"I've seen plenty of things in my life, but this," he spoke, gruffly, "I don't like the looks of this at all."

Kara was also moved. He saw in that chamber a plethora of unnerving evil. The dark forces were at work everywhere and on everything open and hidden to him. It was a kind of sorcery, ancient and unnatural, whose only real purpose was to instill fear and terror on those unlucky enough to wander into it.

He found it difficult to breathe and it was not because of the foul air. He had to get out of that place; it was as if he was completely allergic to it. Senses on high alert, he shivered from the chills that ran down his spine.

"This lab's straight from hell," he commented - the jiggling of chains answered. "Must be a way out -"

"But where would we go?" the man-cat asked.

"I'd -" he stopped mid-sentence. It had not yet fully sunk in that he was a throwback, that he could not go wherever he wished, not even to the underworld anymore. "I can't say, but I know we can't hide here, not forever."

He stared at the ground - tattered flakes of a transparent wrap littered the floor. He picked a pair of samples up. The materials were hard and retained an interlocked shape as though the scraps were pieces of a large, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

"Maybe he was right," he said, thinking back to that human figure. "Robotic - what is it?"

"It's another door."

Kara dropped the items in his hands - the shattered on the ground. He sprinted over to the puma's side and looked at what he pointed to. The wall, at one end of the room, was slightly recessed to form the shape of a flat, wide rectangle. Although the indented overhang left many of the details cast in darkness, enough substance remained that it was clear and evident that a door lay hidden in the shadows.

"Should we try it?"

"We've got to get to the bottom of this, Pumalo," he held the throwback's arm, "there are no accidents here, I can feel it, nothing that's happened has been by chance."

The pair headed forward and found yet another door. It was slightly open and they were not eager at that moment to explore it. Fearing that there could have been someone behind it attempting to lure them into a trap the two held back and kept extremely silent. They tried to peek through the many cracks and crevices but without avail - whatever it opened out to, it was even darker than the chamber they were in.

Somehow, the young lion was not surprised at that.

Taking a chance, he flung the door open with a swift kick - the only lasting sound was that of the hinges creaking and nothing more. The path was clear and he found that, despite initial reservations, the passage - the elongated room with doors at its opposite end - was adequately illuminated by a single, naked light bulb that hung from a chain. The walls were stocked with a bizarre array of grizzly items. He Thundercat forced himself to see and as the fine points emerged from initial obscurity, what he thought had been severed body-parts on display were, in fact, mechanical devices made to look like arms and legs.

"He was right," Pumalo said, under his breath. He walked into the room and examined one of the apparently discarded 'arms.' It crumbled in his hands to his gentlest touch.

Kara followed reluctantly. He caught sight of red, unblinking eyes that lurked deep within the mounds of spare parts. "What do you suppose these are?"

"Failures, old failures."

The youngster pushed back a withered cloth and discovered a box. The implements within were encrusted with dirt and rust. Its gears were loose; its joints had long ago fallen apart. The objects, of which many were covered with patches of brown fur, were useless.

_Bang, bang!_

The pounding was low but forceful.

"You heard that, didn't you?" the teenager asked.

The puma looked around the room attentively - the noise had -

_Bang!_

"Over there!" he pointed to a shelf. A bang and wail answered his cry.

Running to the scattered shelf, spider webs and plumes of dusk riling in their wake, their eyes watering, itching, they found a heavy, iron gate built into the plaster and brick of the walls.

"Help," a disembodied voice squeaked.

In its muffled tones the lion thought he had heard the remnant echoes of a most familiar tone. "It's Caesar!"

"Caesar?" Pumalo searched the barrier's perimeter to locate its features. The door had no knob, just an appliance for a key to lock or unlock it.

"Can you hear me, Caesar?" Kara shouted into the bulk, metal frame.

"Kara," the voice wailed. Another word or two were spoken but the sound was too weak to be intelligible.

The large cat yelled: "Step back!" and rushed upon the iron gate. The full force of his strength was not enough to dent the thick bulkhead but it did shake the hinges and slightly dislodged the frame from the walls. Again and again and again the throwback exerted his full force until his left shoulder was sore - he switched to his right one and repeated the procedure.

Satisfied, he stopped and jiggled the door. It was loose but not free, yet. He got on his knees and pushed his fingers through the bottom crevice. His hold was slight at best but he had weakened the hinges so much so that he was able to lift the door up about half-an-inch. It was less than ample room but room enough to let him slide his whole hands through. He roared in angry frustration and with a great exhale he pulled back the door, ripping it free, throwing it against the shelves, knocking it all down.

Kara ran into the antechamber. The room was small and full of a hot, stale air that remained uncirculated. On the floor was a single, barely-breathing figure. He and Pumalo dragged the man out into the light. It was Caesar - his clothes torn due to what must have been a great struggled to break free.

The Thundercat was on the verge of tears. He held the human in his arms and brought their faces close together. He kissed his cheeks and brushed off the dirt and soil that had collected in his hair, on his skin. "How like an angel," he whispered, "like that first time I saw you. You're safe, now, Caesar," he kissed his lips, "you're with your lion."

"Kara, is that you?" the young human asked as he opened his eyes. The lack of air had affected his brain and he was confused about where he was, how long he had been out. He looked at the feline and, smiling, he petted his red-main and fondled his ears. "You, I knew you'd come to me."

The young lion held him tightly. "What happened?"

"I was kidnapped," he answered, struggling to find the words and fight the fear of the memories that the infernal surroundings were conjuring up.

"By who? Who did it?"

"Didn't see his face 'til the end. It was just after you came to see me, at Cat's Lair. He had turned off the lights to confuse me. Must have smashed my head on something, I don't remember - but when I awoke I was here," he looked back at his makeshift prison. "And I saw him. A tiger-human mix. And I saw - another me."

Kara and Pumalo looked at each other in shock silence.

"It was another me," he went on, "but he told me it was just a machine he had made to look like me." He shook his head. "I don't remember the rest, it's a blur."

The puma thought he had heard something. He searched around but saw only the red eyes of faceless, detached heads. Covered with wires and mangled parts, the eyes roamed about the room, looking, focusing.

"Pumalo and I went down to the ruins today and we saw someone who looked like you," Kara said, "I thought it was you, until it began to speak."

Caesar's eyes widened: "What did it say?"

"It incited the throwback to rebel," the large cat answered. "Some were shocked and fled, but most of the cats followed his lead."

"We must stop it, we must show the workers that it's a machine -"

"But there's more, Caesar," the lion said, holding his human hug.

The man caught a good look at his friend's face: "Kara, you've changed."

"Yes, I have, in many ways. Last night I was summoned by my father to talk with him and he showed me that we were both throwbacks."

"Throwback? The royal family?"

"It's true - I'm sure a lot of people know it. Marsala, my doctors, who knows how many more. He tried to change me, he made me go through medical treatment to repress it but it failed, I guess."

Caesar smiled, "No, no, you couldn't hide it from me, even if you wanted to. I thought there was something -"

"Different? Me too! I never knew what it was until - anyway, I told him that I love you and that I wanted no part in his plans -"

Caesar wrapped his arms around him: "You silly cat, now why did you go do something like that?"

"I'm a Thundercat and my duty's to the truth - but he's done something of his own. I can see the big picture, the small details I can't guess. He's sent the Amazonian guards to arrest you for treason - I know that because the soldier called you a traitor. That happened last night, before the robot had a chance to incite the workers. How did he know then? How did he know what the robot was going to do, if he didn't have a hand in it all, directing the action? My father's framed you and he's trying to shut down your hospital, too."

He sighed, about to speak when a loud siren cut him off.

Scared that they had set off an unseen alarm in the building, they ran out of the passage at once. Following Pumalo's lead, they went down the spiral steps and filed into that small, little room.

"That sound's coming from outside," Kara said.

An explosion rocked the very ground - the humming ceased and the flashing sparks came to an end.

"We're not safe, if that man-tiger's still here," Caesar said.

"He may be the only clue as to what's going on," Kara added.

"We can't stay here, we have to stop that robot - those poor cats, the Imperial guard won't hesitate to shoot," the young man added.

"And they have orders to take Caesar in," Pumalo said. "But what if they see two Caesars, the real one and the fake one? Won't that raise suspicions?"

"I might have been put into that room to kill me later or to let me die in there. By being out and alive, well don't you see," he and the lion smiled.

"Yes, how would my father explain it? The truth would have to come out - still, it won't be easy, unless they capture the two of you and realize that it's the robot who's been firing up the workers -"

"Lord Phaeton's plans would go out the window - they'd ask where the robot came from -"

Kara grasped his beloved by the shoulders and rubbed the side of his face on his cheek. "Metropolis must know the truth about its leader. The injustice will crumble and the Code of Thundera will reign supreme."


	22. Chapter 22

High above the city, glimmering sunlight broke through thick clouds and spread its wide rays into the bare windows of the Imperial Office. The vast room was deafly quiet, anxiously still. The throne and its golden motto were undisturbed before black curtains and between ionic pillars - the columns supported nothing, it seemed, but the emptiness of power. The circular desk, put near the door, was neatly kept. Chairs, monitors, consoles and lamps remained stationed in place, unmoved.

A thin layer of dust had settled upon every item in the scene.

The door to the small, side chamber opened with a slight click and Lord Phaeton emerged from the darkness to the light, covering his eyes with the back of his bare arm. Permanent shadows were cast on his face, despite the fact that he stood directly in the way of the sun. Half-blinded, he struggled to cross the office space, mindful to not bump into things along the way. Reaching the windows, he fretted with the curtains and manually drew the covers shut.

Normally Marsala would have been there to do it for him, but that day his Master of Activities was somewhere below, addressing a conference of merchant guilds. That day was different from all the others that had come before it - he knew it, he felt it. In a matter of time, coming and approaching soon, the whole of the world would know, too, just how rare that day would turn out to be.

"Kara," he lamented, allowing himself for a moment the luxury to feel a sense of fatherly emotion he had never had or thought he would have. If only the eye would open, if only the sword was not limp, useless - oh, how easy life would be, how simple.

The phone rang. Its blinking lights signaled its location on the curved tabletop. He ran to answer it. The call had not been routed by his secretary. It was a private line that ran directly to him.

"Yes?" he asked, speaking into the receiver.

A female voice answered: "Lord Phaeton -"

"Julia?" he grabbed a chair and sat suddenly exhausted. "Julia, did you find that unusual lion-cub? Remember, no harm, _no harm_ is to come to him -"

"I understand - one of my men located him at that hospital -"

"The one that traitor Caesar ran?"

"Yes, but we lost him. He entered the underworld through a service tunnel."

The old lion sighed and almost let the phone fall to the floor.

"But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about, sir. We have another problem."

His eyes opened and he sat back very casually. "What sort of, problem?"

"We've received -"

The muffled sound of an explosion ravaged the world at the other end of the receiver -

"What was that? Julia?" he shouted, not completely shocked, not entirely surprised.

"Let me say," she coughed and took a minute to catch her breath - she was running - "we can confirm that several hundred, perhaps thousand throwbacks have revolted."

"It must be that Caesar!" he said, smiling, "Crush them, send the full-front of the Amazonian guard after them."

"Over and out," she hung up at her end.

Phaeton returned the phone to its cradle, looking at it, moving it around with his finger. "So the workers have rebelled, hmmm," he said aloud. "Mwahahahaha! Hahahaha!" He stood and stumbled back into his secret antechamber to laugh at the sword, oblivious, for his office was so dark, that the explosion he had heard second hand had knocked off power to a large section of the local area. "I don't need you anymore!" he mocked its six-inch length, its unconscious eye.

_But he was not the only one watching, laughing. The ancient mummy spread his arms wide, loose bandages dangled from his thin arms. Looming above him, the four, guardian statues crawled forward, their eyes ablaze as long-denied power coursed through their engraved forms._


	23. Chapter 23

Above, large clumps of dust poured in from the circular hole in the ceiling on to the spiral steps. Below, the cement floor was cold and cluttered with the remains of the door Pumalo had broken. Behind, a mass of scraps and furniture clogged the opening to the subterranean tunnels. Ahead stood the one, remaining obstacle, the only choice left and they hesitated, they paused for a moment of indecision.

"I'm afraid, Caesar," the young lion clung to his human in a tight embrace.

Into his ear he spoke softly: "So am I."

Moving the pair out of the way, the large cat rushed to the wooden door and nearly smashed it free from its hinges. It was a thick slab, unlike the others and seemed to have been reinforced. He tried again and in so doing retracted much of its oak frame and exposed the iron beams embedded in it. Frustrated beyond bearing, he gave it one last kick and it fell, lifeless.

"It's now or never," the puma growled, his gruff timber an accident of his cranial design. He grabbed the two and shoved them forward, into the passage, he himself following closely. The ceiling was low and he had to stoop on his knees to fit through. Shredded cobwebs brushed against his mane, sharp sprinkles of paint rained on the fur of his shoulders and back.

Outside, the climate of Metropolis was unnaturally calm and silent. The air was still. The sounds of the city had been muffled. Dark shadows had been cast over the scene, not clouds, not the slant of buildings. It was, instead, a more dubious cause, a more sinister predicament. Lights, streetlights, traffic lights, spotlights were off, all of them everywhere. Electric vehicles were stopped; their gadgetry remained in a state of perpetual stasis.

Tall towers and cascading structures loomed naked and unprotected, their godly luster gone, their stature reduced to the mere shards of their former selves.

"Ahhh!" the lion screamed and collapsed.

Shocked, his friends looked on in helpless horror as he squirmed on the sidewalk.

"Cub," Pumalo held his arms and gently eased him up. "What is it, what's wrong?"

Kara covered his face with his hands - Caesar drew them back.

Blood tickled from his misshapen nose but it was the teenager's mouth that was the cause of his extreme discomfort. The muscles wrapped around his jaws had shifted position and the effect was unutterably painful. Masses of flesh in his face moved below his tight hide and in response his mouth snapped shut. Fighting back the tears, he exercised his jaw, open and shut, the way he had taught himself earlier.

Barely audible, he said: "Sorry, it happened again." His lips were only slightly parted and did not move as he spoke. "I didn't think it would happen again."

Caesar rubbed the cat's hands: "Your face is changing," he leaned over and kissed his cheek, "is it better now?"

"Much," he nodded.

Pumalo gave him a tight squeeze and helped him to his feet.

Algernon slumbered in bed, uncovered. Long days and nights of work had weakened the outcast doctor. Having unleashed upon the world his lifelike robot, he set the alarm to noon and prepared himself for a long, drawn-out rest. But the device had failed and it was both directly and indirectly his fault.

He rubbed his eyes as rays of bright light seeped through the windows of the bedroom. He looked at the clock but its green digits had faded black. Disturbed, he eased himself out of the bed and looked around the chamber. The security monitors were off-line, the telephones were dead, the crystal radio received static only.

The unblocked daylight irritated his eyes and the effect distracted his mind. He rushed to the windows, intent to shut the portals. At that very moment a series of explosions shattered the ground and almost knocked him off his feet. The human-tiger staggered up and peered out of the pane, covered in the relative safety of the curtain's dark fabric - a large mob, formless and indistinct by distance, had emerged from the cavernous recess of the city.

"Lord Phaeton's plans are going better than expected," he chuckled. To think that it had worked so well, so quickly. Were the throwbacks so gullible, or was his machine so perfect?

Personal safety was an idea too superfluous to the doctor at that moment. He had instructed his creation to keep the rioting and looting as far away from his home as possible. Besides, the lord of the Thundercats would have never let anything happen to him. Who else could build the robots for him?

His eyes started from their sockets in flash of terror.

Caesar stood just a hundred feet from his house, on the abandoned streets, with two throwbacks at his side.

"No!" he shouted as he ran across the room. Either the machine had malfunctioned or the unthinkable, the unimaginable that happened. Down and endless flight of stairs, past swinging doors and through darkened halls he made his way to the storeroom next to his lab. At once his red, black striped face lost its color. He could see it, it was obvious - the prisoner had escaped, the real Caesar had been set free.

Falling on his knees he pieced his fate together: "If the facts are ever known, if the people are told that it was my robot that started this and not that human, not even Thundercats could save me."

Resolved, he had one option left and he had to act fast, every moment, every second delayed was irrecoverable - he had to kill the man himself.

"Do you know what section this is?" Kara asked, ducking beneath the trunk of a sitting car.

"It isn't familiar," he answered, "but if the towers are our guides," he pointed up, "then the hospital isn't too far away."

A loud, wailing gasp - screaming, tearing - an explosion silenced the ruckus.

Pumalo slunked out from behind the side of the vehicle into the huddled group. "The rioters are coming," he announced.

"I'm sure they wouldn't damage the place or hurt the people in it."

He brushed the lion's red mane and nudged his ear. "I hope so, too."

"The soldiers might still be in there," he added.

"They have a bigger problem to deal with right now," the puma said.

He nodded: "Yes, yes, I'm sure the Amazonians'll need every man and woman on duty -"

The growling shouts and screeching flames came nearer and nearer. The pavement pounded, the buildings trembled. The air came alive with the telltale sounds of death and destruction.

"I need to see the people there," he told the others, "they know me, they're on my side, if I can explain this to them then I'm sure they'll help me."

"What can we do?" the large cat asked.

"You and Kara can blend into the mob - it'll be hard to convince them that the robot's a fake but if you could bring it and them to the hospital, I'll come out to them. They'll know me, I'm sure of it."

The three stood, the lion wrapped his arms around the man's waist. In tears he said: "Don't go, please don't go."

Caesar rubbed under Kara's chin, slowly, softly, pleased to hear a slight purr from his cat. "I have to, I can't abandon them." He paused to kiss his lips. "I'm counting on you two. It won't be easy, but we can bring this to an end." He gave the teenager one last hug. "The truth will come out, my lion, no power in Metropolis can stop it now."

He could not bear to keep his eyes off of him, even as he lurked through the maze of the streets, even as Pumalo tugged at his arm, he could not help but stare while his beloved vanished into the haze of the distance. He stood still, heart-heavy, watching, waiting, all the while the chronometric ticks of seconds lengthened and broadened until at last it seemed that time itself had melted away. A dark-clad figure moved about the sidelines, following the human's every move. Stealthy and indistinct, the teenager focused his eyes upon it and in the blink of his eyes the dark shadow disappeared - he shook his head and -

"We have to go," the large cat told him. "He'll be safe, he knows what he's doing, Kara."

"I know, I know," he no longer resisted the puma's insistence to move forward. "I worry too much."

The shouting and rioting throwbacks had emerged from the horizon. Hundred of displaced workers trampled the sidewalks and avenues, smashing glass storefronts and beating steel frameworks to piles of groaning rubbish. Vehicles were overturned, homes were looted, the visible and outward signs of civilization and progress obliterated and set ablaze by the torch-bearing, club-wielding rioters.

"A mindless sea of Thunderians," Pumalo quipped. "What have we gotten ourselves into?"

Kara was taken aback in terror - what had he gotten himself into, he wondered. No longer restrained by inhibitions, the individuals had dissolved from their particular characters to a mass of chaos, a machine of violence. It understood no reason, it knew only hate and destruction and its application wanton and unrestrained.

"We have to find the fake Caesar," he said at last, "he's the one directing them. They'll follow him to the ends of Metropolis."

With one last look back, the two headed forward, into the raging core of the invading beast.


	24. Chapter 24

Kara and Pumalo were engulfed by the crowd - the ground trembled, windows shattered in the stampede. Hoards of workers fled past them and for the most part they were ignored by the rioters. They blended perfectly into the mob that was far too concerned with the business of destruction to care about them.

To find the robotic Caesar, they had to work their way through the sea of throwbacks. Their actions - or inactions - might alarm suspicions, especially with those maddened outcasts with enough rational power left to notice. So to evade wandering eyes, the large cat found a mangled piece of steel, covered it with discarded rags and, with the aid of a car fire, set it ablaze. He urged the young lion to follow close to him -

Kara had hid behind a pillar of steel, fifty feet in diameter. Looming above was the inconceivably gigantic base of a tall, skyscraper - trickling frozen drops of rain fell from its gray and black edifice. He blinked and shook his head - Pumalo stood behind him with the torch.

Wordlessly they moved on, deeper and deeper, the air thrashing their manes in cold and hot streams - horrors, unthinkable to the world of light, were carried out openly and unrestrained in the streets.

Apartment buildings that had not been completely evacuated were ransacked and trampled, wailing tenants on the roof fighting back the throwbacks. The people were taken aback in fear just by the faces of the mob - many they had never seen such horrid features. Metropolis had long sheltered its people from the grim reality of the subterranean slaves - and those that had been to the depths held the firm beliefs of the popular myths, that the deformed workers were blood-thirsty cannibals, that their larger bodies were proof of their violent potential and that their heads reflected their animalistic character. It was understandable that centuries of ingrained ignorance led the unlucky citizens to jump out of windows and balconies.

Humans were either beaten up or allowed to flee. Thunderians, their feline brethren, their perceived masters, were the ones made to suffer.

Trains that had stopped were derailed and looted. Cars were stacked up side down, smashed and battered. Homes and businesses alike were broken into and set ablaze. Sirens and flashing alarms signaled the progress of the worker's rebellion.

Explosions rang from below - the ground broke apart. Bridges swayed violently to the gentlest breeze - their steel cables snapped and their imposing spans collapsed and sunk beneath the earth. A dense cloud of powdered rock and cement clung suspended to the immediate scene.

It was terrifying and the two were shocked numb to see what their kind was capable of. Were the throwbacks were no different from the brutal taskmasters and foremen who controlled their destinies for millennia? How could they appeal for justice now? How could they convince the world that they were peaceful, benevolent now?

The lion clutched the puma's arm.

At last they came upon the object of their mission, the cyborg double, the spider at the web's center, that with a push or pull in any direction sent chains of events unfolding from one end of the mob to another. They ducked behind a pile of rubble and looked on as the machine pointed to groups and told them what to do with loud shouts and frenzied gestures. The cats around it picked it up and carried it around on their shoulders.

"I've got an idea," he told Pumalo. "If it recognizes us then, if it sees us, it'll order the others to get us -"

The large cat put down the torch and mulled over the fragmented plan. "I don't know, cub, we're surrounded."

"We'd have to act with caution. And when we run to the hospital and the real Caesar, we can't be too fast that they lose us, just fast enough that they can't catch us."

The puma took a deep breath and nodded. "You're right, we can't reason with them, but we'll need a back-up plan if the crowds get too thick."

"We'll have to find an entrance to the underworld." A shout distracted him but it quickly faded without follow-through. "We'll get past this, you'll see, we'll survive."

He smiled and grabbed the teenager in a tight hug. "You're a great friend," he said, "I want you to know that."

The lion let his hold linger for a few moments more. He had gotten to know the throwback better than his own father and he so desperately wanted to enjoy his company as long as possible. With a sigh he let go. "Come on."

The he-cat helped him to his feet and stood at his side. He and the youth emerged from the hiding spot to the rear of the small group of bodyguards that carried the robot on their backs. The two ran past the troupe, overtook them and stopped to show their faces to the cyborg - a flash of red eyes fell upon them with their look of lifeless, mechanical nothingness.

The throwbacks that had long served demonic machines now served a mechanical god.

"You're no Caesar," Kara shouted into his hands, "you're not even a man!"

Its eyes widened - the group stopped, growled and shouted back: "Kill the traitors!"

The cyborg eased itself down from the lofty heights of its admirers' shoulders and sprinted forward as if to lead the charge.

"That's our cue," Pumalo said, "RUN!"

The mad dash was not the controlled, paced chase that the youngster had had in mind. Fear and adrenaline had had its effect on their sense of reason and judgment. Sometimes Kara was in the lead, sometimes Pumalo caught up. They swerved around crowds, turned past corners, raced across wide boulevards and through avenues littered with flaming tar and melting glass - all the while the shouts of 'kill them kill them' hard on the heels.

The young lion turned his head back for a moment. The human-esque machine had outraced its bodyguards. It was enraged, visibly angered. Could it feel? Could it think? _Did it matter?_ he thought and concluded at once that nothing mattered. To it, life and death were as dry and as sterile as the binary code at the root of its silicone brain.

Three, sleek planes scorched through the air at near supersonic speeds. The black, unmarked fighters hugged the low streets and everyone, everywhere stopped and looked up. Hearing the roaring echoes, they, too, stopped and ducked for cover in the open hallway of an abandoned high-rise. They huddled in the darkness of the passage and looked out - the Caesar robot stood in the middle of the road, shaking its fists at the approaching planes.

But the war-vehicles were not only there to take a panoramic view of the chaos - they had located and honed their targets and fired. Broken, shattered brick façades, decrepit beyond bearing, fell to the sidewalks and formed smoking piles of rubbish. Holes were pummeled into the streets. The gunfire's impact shattered the pavement and blew vehicles apart.

Having no regard for the value of life, at the end the machine had no conception of its own existence. Unable to reason beyond its programming, it commanded the retreating and horrified throwbacks to fight the airplanes. It looked about, angered, unaware that had been shot until a further spray of bullets knocked it to the ground. It got back up, despite the bleeding and otherwise fatal wounds - the onlookers who witnesses gasped in utter confusion.

The last two planes plowed up the street but instead of shooting off bullets they lit up the scene with red, glowing beams of light.

"Get back, Pumalo," the lion grabbed the large cat by the waist and dragged him deeper into the darkness. The main passage connected to stairs and to a side hall that ran perpendicular to the main entrance. "It's a laser ray," he explained.

The two remained near the jagged edge of the corridor - the reddish tint of the heat weapon inched up the stairs and kept away from them, much to their relief.

Kara turned back from the hot hair that seeped into the building. He saw a door open to the interior of a ransacked apartment. In the recesses of the large, inner room were throwback children, huddled with their mothers, sobbing and crying. Despite the shadows he gauged much about the mysterious females. Smaller in stature than the males, they were in many ways no different from the acceptable Thunderians he had known all his life - except that their heads were slightly larger in proportion to their bodies. No - it was an illusion, brought about by their ancient features.

An eternity passed but in time the roaring sounds ceased.

Pumalo crawled out of the passage and Kara followed his friend. The planes had passed but the damage they had caused lingered. The workers who had not fled for cover lay on the road, reduced to flaming, charred skeletons or piles of ash that emanated smoke. Still others had not completely died - the great heat had either vaporized parts of their bodies or melted them into the tar of the pavement, their screams and wails pierced the still atmosphere of the cavernous towers.

But the robot - slowly, gradually, the rioters that had survived came out to see that Caesar - what they thought was Caesar - was skinless except for the face, but even that mask of flesh fell to the ground, consumed by fire. Unveiled before them was the skeletal frame of the mechanical cyborg. Flames had spread to its wiring and its internal parts deformed in the heat. It tried to stand but, so thoroughly destroyed, it collapsed, no more than a rejected pile of metal shards.

Cries of terror bellowed through the mob -

Kara sighed in relief - it was over, it - he thought back. He had seen a dark shadow fallow Caesar but he had paid it no attention. "Pumalo," he said, turning his face up to the large cat.

The puma scratched his head.

"Oh, no," he looked at the shocked and subdued mob, "CAESAR!" he screamed and ran up the smoky, brittle sidewalk.

"Kara, wait!" the puma shouted, struggling to catch up.


	25. Chapter 25

The young lion arrived at the scene immediately around the yellow-bricked building - his sense of direction was so acute, so keenly honed that it had transcended mere expertise and had become animal instinct, bred into his genes. He was thankful that the soldiers had gone and that the hospital was undamaged - the ravaging throwbacks had not reached the site. He looked back, stopping to tame his panting breath and saw, to his horror, that he had outrun and lost the large cat.

Kara was alone and in exhausted desperation succame to a moment of panic.

But that weakness was temporary and in an instant his resolve returned - he caught a glimpse of that dark shadow, hiding and moving through the discarded trash and rubble.

Open in the filtered daylight, the shape was no longer obscured by ethereal vagueness. The figure was a man-tiger hybrid, with red and black stripes and thinning mane. The interloper crouched low to the ground to keep his head concealed just below cover. The stranger bobbed left and right, his attention transfixed upon the steps of the main entrance.

Footsteps - Kara shifted his eyes up to the open glass doors of the lightless lobby. Caesar emerged from the building unscathed and just the sight of him alive and well put a smile on his face.

"NO! WAIT!" he shouted - the mysterious figure jumped out of the pile of discarded ruins and jabbed the young man in the ribs.

Caught completely off-guard, Caesar staggered back and did not retaliate when the red tiger lunged at his head.

Enraged, Kara snarled and rushed into the chaos of the fight -

At that very moment the ground rumbled and a large bubble emerged beneath the pavement of the streets. The conical form grew and expanded, it knocked cars over, it heaved and cracked iron struts and concrete embankments - it became so immense that the very substance of the road splintered and a noxious, gray smoke plumed up from beneath with a piercing loud howl that made him and the strange, human-tiger wince in pain. The sliver widened, the red tips of flames licked the jagged edge of the rent and sizzled the boiling, dripping tar.

The entire block on the other side of the hospital gave way and collapsed one hundred feet to the surface of Third Earth. The massive hole that shift had created gave clear and unobstructed view of the hell beneath - a dynamo had exploded and the ensuing fires had spread over a wide area. The heat of the flames was so intense that it melted the soil and buckled the very supports of that sector of Metropolis. The red, orange tendrils of the infernal flames snaked and wisped about like the thrashing snakes of hell itself, striving to consume all in its path.

"You!" the young lion said, grabbing the figure's shoulder, "you built that robot!"

Black, ashy smoke vented from manholes and sewer grates and other, large holes the rebellious workers had carved out of the city.

It was Algernon but he did not respond with words - distracted from his work of killing Caesar, he turned to Kara with an equally sinister design. He curled his lip to reveal white, sharp teeth and motioned his fisted arm -

But the youth was quick and anticipated the strike. He drew back quickly and just as swiftly kicked the older tiger just under the stomach. Yet, the human hybrid was not hurt - the doctor lunged at the lion's jaw but he made no contact. Kara threw his body's weight forward and knocked Algernon backward, onto the street - losing his balance, he fell, too.

Caesar lay across the steps, gradually coming to but largely unconscious - his eyes blinked open and he saw, helplessly, how his friend and that strange tiger-man tumbled about the street, dangerously close to the precipitous edge. He wanted to yell out a warning, he wanted to get up and help his friend but his beating had sapped his strength and he had barely enough will to keep awake.

Kara moved his head away in time before the mad inventor could pound his boot into his face. The ground was hot and it seared his fur through the holes that the fight was shredding into his uniform. He spun around and his legs touched Algernon's shins.

A black helicopter's chopping blades scorched the air above - the doctor was distracted and the young lion was terrified. He used the full-force of his strength to knock the red, black tiger down. Still on the ground himself, he kicked the stranger's face again and again and again until his own face was hit by a spray of blood.

He got up - the man, too, tried to stand but legs dangled precariously from the jittery rim that marked the boundary of the deep hole. He stomped on the figure's hands until his fingers let go of their hold and he slid back some more.

Algernon managed to latch onto a rock that protruded up from the road but the heat - in spite of the fact that the fire below had consumed itself - had seriously deformed the pavement. The stone loosened and with it gone nothing held the doctor back from the hundred-foot fall of death.


	26. Chapter 26

Arcid, gray smoke bellowed from the sewer grates and manholes up around the nearby buildings to the unblocked sky - turbulence and drag had elongated the smog to form spiky fingers. The air howled with the screeching advance of armed planes, pulsated with the chopping jar of surveillance helicopters.

The frenzied shouts of denizens echoed through the cavernous mazes of the lower parts of the city - the frightened merchants and shopkeepers fled from the maddening, raging mobs to the safety of the lofty upper levels that authorities had prepared for the emergency. The streets were aglow with the licking flames and flickering lights of the unruly surface. Blasting megaphones and wailing sirens completed the sense of absolute chaos.

Units of armed Amazonian guards - men and women - were deployed on foot by their Thundercat commanders. Dividing the rioting outcasts into smaller, more manageable groups, they corralled the throwbacks with their gunfire and Thundrainium gas. Slowly the troops led the malformed cats to the depths.

Engineers and technicians tended to the broken machines intent to repair the metallic heart of Metropolis that it might beat once more. Fire crews put out the flames. Construction men propped up the gutted, ransacked structures. Sanitation workers cleaned the debris, the shattered glass and scattered remains of the world turned up side down. All the while and with great effort order and control was restored - even local power was back on-line.

Sunset approached - as it always had for days without number - and in its flailing red, orange wake, the only throwback rebellion in memory had come to an end - or so the newsmen and broadcasters said to reassure the terrified public.

Kara was crouched on the street, on the very edge of the causeway, his right knee to the pavement, his left foot flat on the ground. He stared at the hundred-foot drop, smoke and ash brushing against his face. He looked at the bloody body of Algernon, his remains, unmoving, lay along his side. His balance unnerved, he sprinted away from the brittle overhang of the collapsed avenue.

He heard a coarse dragging from behind and turned around to see. "Caesar," he purred.

The cheetah doctor was helping the man across the road. His face was sore, eyes blackening, nose bleeding. His body ached, that unexpected fight with the half-human, half-tiger hybrid had taken the better of him. He limped, his left foot lagging, wincing with every step.

The lion rushed to him and grabbed him around the waist - holding and pressing their worn-out bodies together, in that all-too-brief moment they exchanged amorous kisses, punctuated by fragments of words softly spoken through sobs.

"They saw the robot for what it was," Kara said. "It was burnt and it tore to shreds."

"Can things ever be the same again?" Caesar asked as he wiped the blood off his nose with his sleeve - that was when he noticed -

"I don't know," the Thunderian answered, "I don't know."

"Kara, your face!" the human gently reached out and with his fingers roamed about the features of this friend. Nose, jaw, even lips had been transformed from the modern, accepted character to the ancient, out-casted quality. In awe he kissed each and every thing he explored. "Does it hurt?"

He shook his head and sighed happily. "The pain is gone. Oh, by Jagga, the pain is gone, Caesar - I'm free!" He put his hands on his own face not in shame anymore but to feel his newly formed countenance. Sobbing he asked: "Do I look beautiful?"

Sobbing, too, he answered: "Yes, of course, you silly cat." Hugging him, he petted his red mane and let his fingers fondle the hidden tips of his ears. "You are beautiful, don't you know that already?"

They stopped their quivering lips with a kiss.

"You two better get inside the hospital fast," the cheetah said. She drew their attention to her and she pointed them to the distance. Two things were happening at once: a small mob of workers was heading to the scene, their marching out of phase, their shouting incoherent and a large, black helicopter was aiming to land on the abandoned street, its rotating blades chopping the air, its gusting currents upsurging through the rubble. "Come on," she tried to drag the couple back but it was too late.

The throwbacks had been herded to that spot by the menacing gunfire of the air-vehicle. The Amazonian warriors were charged with the task of bringing that group to underworld. And they had another duty to perform, too, for their commanders had seen Kara and Algernon fight and had ordered their superior officer to rectify the outcome of that brawl.

In the meanwhile, as the vessel was being unloaded, a lone figure emerged from the crowd. He approached the dangling edge of the roadside and peered straight down its side. By then the upsurging smoke had cleared and the gory scene was easy to see, though it was bit obscured by the distance.

"Pumalo, go with the doctor," Kara said, he and Caesar had unlocked their embrace. "Who knows what they might do to you if they thought -"

He nodded, wiping the sweat off of his brow with his forearm. The puma step away from the treacherous fall to the lab-coated cheetah. In the way that only those of his kind knew, in plain sight he hid his large frame behind her small sleek body.

Giving in - as if they ever had a chance - the deformed Thunderians sat themselves down on the pavement, their hands behind their heads and waited for the inevitable. Twenty armed humans in dark, unmarked uniforms surrounded them and, with their barrels pointing, got them up to their feet and directed them to a platform. The makeshift elevator was set to take them back to their home in the deep, hot hives of Third Earth.

"Hold it right there!" a stern, female voice shouted. The helmet-clad woman brandished a massive, imposing weapon. "Don't move, freak!"

"What?" Caesar asked, incensed. He limped toward her - she and two male soldiers had come blazing in to the area outside of the hospital. "What's all this for?"

"Step away from the throwback!" she shouted again. "Now!"

One of the men behind her stepped forward, thrashing his weapon side to side as if to indicate to the man that he had to get back.

"This is outrageous," he continued to protest, "we've -"

"That throwback killed a citizen," the gun-toting man said. "There's only one form of punishment for that crime." One form, swift and speedy. "Now step away."

"That, citizen, was the one responsible for all of this - Kara -" he looked at the lion, still amazed at how quickly he had changed. He had emerged from limbo to his most natural state, his most complete form totally metamorphosized - and yet in that world of Metropolis -

Sensing something familiar about the helmeted woman, he inched closer to her and said: "I know who you are, you're Julia - but don't you -" he was about to say 'recognize me' but he realized then only too late that the words would fall on deaf ears.

Although all that could be seen of her face was the last half of her chin, enough change in her flesh was visible to notice that his words had had an effect - but not the kind he had intended.

"That's enough now step away!" the man with the weapon shouted, his voice drowning the presence of a helicopter that hovered about the scene.

"Wait, Julia," came yet closer to her and for a brief moment broke contact with Caesar.

"Kara!" The hazel-eyed youth, defying the weakness of his battered body, lunged upon the red-manned lion-cub and knocked him to the ground, holding his arms around him in a tight embrace.

In the ensuing chaos the soldier with the gun lost control of his senses and, believing that the life of his superior officer was in danger, he fired once upon the entangled pair that tumbled on the ground. In a flash the two dissolved, their bodies decomposed to a gray, chalky ash that for a moment and no longer retained the shape, contour and outline of their living forms then evaporated in puffs of smoke. The officer gasped and dropped his weapon as soon as he saw what he had done. His aim was for the throwback of course - death was his punishment - but -

"That's," the woman said, taking off her helmet, trying desperately to think of a way to explain the mess to Lord Phaeton. She was indeed familiar in voice and feature. "There's nothing to see here," she said to the cheetah and the lone figure behind her. "Get back to -" she paused for some reason, for no reason. She looked at the concrete where the faint outline of the man and the lion remained, etched in its very substance. She could not help but wonder why the cat looked familiar, despite the obvious malformity. Perhaps it was something about the mane, perhaps it was the color of the fur coat or perhaps it was nothing at all but a faint, foggy memory disfigured and distorted by time. "Get back, I said! There's nothing to see here."

"Fools," Pumalo spoke gruffly - the feline doctor took hold of his shoulder - "you don't know what you've done." The puma hung his head and sobbed loudly, turning around in shame. The cheetah patted his arm - her eyes, too, welled glossy wet.

The female soldier waved her arm at her backup and with that the group of three returned to the helicopter.


	27. Chapter 27

It was Marsala's hand, pale and trembling, that reached out of the shadow, into the flickering glow of the monitor and shut off the instrument, plunging the chamber into abject darkness. And while his eyes throbbed and ached, his ears, too, were assaulted by the silence, the oppressive, staggering silence. He paused before the silvered screen of the device, sighed and ran his fingers over the dusty glass, feeling the prickling sparks of its static discharge.

He turned around, head low, shoulders shrugged. He wanted to say something, anything, as if out of the blue, as though mere words alone could possibly change what had happened. Indeed, how could he deny even to himself the evidence of his own senses, the reality of the images that had come from the scene to the office, fresh and unedited?

At last only one idea, one glimmer of hope came to mind: "There's still a chance that maybe it wasn't him, that throwback lion could have been anyone, anyone but -"

"My plans have failed," Phaeton looked like the walking dead, his world collapsing, ending. "Marsala!" he wailed. The Lord of the Thundercats covered his face in his large paws, despite the fact that the dreary, bleak shade of the room had already done a better job of masking his features.

The man reached out to the lion but he, weakened and unnerved, staggered back mindlessly until the great bulk and form of his throne stopped him in his tracks. Again, without thought, he sat himself on its satin, red cushions. He sobbed openly and loudly into his hands, mumbling over and over the broken phrase 'my son, my son,' unaware - completely lost in his shattered world - that his one and only friend had knelt before the imperial chair and lain his head over his lap.

"Maybe, maybe it wasn't - yes! That's it Marsala," he stroked the man's black hair with his tear-wet fingers. "He couldn't have reverted like that so quickly."

"Of course not - we'll have the Amazonians look for him now that they're down there," he massaged the Thunderian's thigh to console him in that momentary intimacy, lovingly, innocently.

Phaeton nodded and, grabbing Marsala by the arms, lifted him. "Yes, yes, that's what we'll do." He looked into his eyes, seeing the wetness of the round, white-black orbs, oddly visible in those adverse conditions. "Get the communicator, we'll order them to search at once."

Invigorated by the denial, he all but sprinted from the throne to the austere, semicircular desk - but just as he was about to open the appropriate drawer, a knock echoed from the door. He turned to his master who himself had sat up in a sort of shock at the sonorous intrusion. The Thundercat shook his head as if to will it away but defiantly, the knock returned and resounded in the office.

"Come in," Marsala said, stepping away from the table, drying his face.

The glossy, stately door opened to the accompany of a creak heretofore unknown. Dying, reddish sunlight leaked in through the bare windows in the lobby without. A figure, lost to the murky nothingness of a silhouetted oblivion limped into the chamber and then collapsed onto its knees.

Marsala rushed forward to it defensively - Phaeton got up out of his chair and ran down toward the safety of his secret, hidden chamber.

"By Jagga!" the man cried as he helped the figure up. "It's Kara."

"What? What?" the lion stormed across the tile to the yet unseen stranger, in his haste nearly dropping his minister to the floor. "Kara, Kara, oh Kara! Let me touch you, hold you." He put his hands around the sides of the figure's face, feeling its every feature: mane, ears, brow, bridge of nose, lashes, sunken eyes, curling, quivering lips that seemed lost in an unearthly blend of happy-sadness. Dragging the stranger to the window he confirmed without doubt what mere touch had only hinted at. It was Kara and he looked -

"You've been injured?" His tone was clearly unusual, but in a way was it not normal? He had felt what it was like to have his universe crumble before him - even for the space of that brief moment - and now, in relief, for the first time in his life he was joyous, ecstatic because at the end what he had failed to appreciate before, what he thought he had lost forever was still in the world with him, still alive.

"It's a long story, but I'm all right, really, I'm all right, father." He shook ash and soot from his borrowed, laborer's clothes that were torn and shredded in various places.

Marsala joined the Thunderian pair, putting a hand on his lord's shoulder. "He's all right. You're alive, son," he patted the figure's mane - the red mane, deep red.

_Somewhere, in some deep, dark, hidden cavern, in the bowels of Third Earth, a circular pool in an ancient, timeless pyramid, boiled violently and formed large bubbles that evolved and coalesced, popping, scattering water that scalded sore the surrounding rocks -_

"Yes, I'm all right, you don't have to worry. And look, look," he took Phaeton and Marsala's hands into his own and brought them up to his cheek. "My face, it's normal. I thought it was changing, but it's normal again."

_In that vast chamber, the tall statues that encompassed the vibrant cauldron, the ever-watchful spirits of evil looked down upon the foamy, frothy water, their eyes red, glowing, smoky red -_

Marsala drew back, Phaeton shivered suddenly, unexpectedly. The lion felt a cold - an unnatural cold akin to death - from otherwise supple, elastic flesh. He noticed, too, for no more than a passing moment, that the stranger's eyes shined a dusky, earthy red - it was familiar but he could not put his finger on it. And yet with a blink the effect had vanished and was no more.

_At the back of the raised platform, amid encrusted spider webs, was the mummy's coffin - its lid open, it stood in darkness empty -_

The Sword of Omens fell from its stand in the dormant antechamber without so much as a thud - its eye smashed, shattered crystal scattered on the floor.

_The stone vault rumbled and a gray haze evolved from the pool. Down from above, it appeared that through the effect of the fog, that there were marks along its outer circumference - twelve marks, evenly spaced, all around the circle. It seemed, too, that from the bursting bubbles and waving foam, that a new and familiar image had come to the cauldron - arms, straight and black, emerged from its exact center. No, now no longer in the pyramid, through arts beyond the physical, the scene was transported to the clock that hung above the foreman's post, deep in the humid hives of the underworld, there where time itself, second by second, inched and crawled forward to an inescapable, unstoppable conclusion. Transformed again it became a relay - complete with Pumalo sweating, adjusting its arms, a slave to the buzzing of unceasing sirens - and yet it was not one relay alone and not one worker but an army of throwbacks, toiling in unison, in step to the demonic ticking of the metallic heart of the cosmic city._

"Mwahahahahaha! Everything is going to be all right, now," the figure held Phaeton's arms. "You'll see, you'll see. I was wrong before, but now I know the error of my ways." He smiled, grinned. "I love you, father, I love Metropolis."

_Motion, forever and ever, boundless, endless, around and round, for all eternity-_

* * *


End file.
